Meritocracy vs. Diversity....is there a right answer?

TooOld4School
Fri, 10 May 2019 14:44:07 +0000

Board members are hired for a specific mission - to create the strategy to grow their firms and provide governance for management. With a clear mandate, it’s a lot easier to use specific criteria to hire people. They often pick a mix of people- very successful people in large firms- from business, government, education etc. so they have more feelers and lookouts for long-term threats to and opportunities for the firm. None of that involves ‘diversity’.

It all comes down the specifics. Assuming that I had the luxury of choice, and a wide enough skilled applicant pool , would I use racial/ethnic diversity hiring criteria in a medical practice? Yes, because it would likely improve patient care for a variety of reasons. In a surgical practice? No because it would make little difference and the skill of my practitioners is far more important.