At the beginning of the summer, as we read about the challenges of organizational culture and diversity and inclusion, the question that kept recurring to me was: \u201cWhy aren\u2019t CEOs and other leaders held accountable for creating measurable progress in these areas?\u201d After all, they are held accountable for performance in so many other areas of their businesses. I was curious to find out if any research had been done on the roles leaders play in creating change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few things happened as we transitioned into Unit 2 that redirected my focus. First, as I read the Expanding the Canon<\/a> blog posts of my classmates, I began to see that issues of bias and discrimination extend beyond the boundaries of organizations into society where they are pervasive and systemic. The idea of focusing on the role of CEOs, while important, seemed too narrow to me. Second, our classmate Sherri Holmes\u2019s post<\/a> on \u201cAlgorithm-Driven Hiring Tools: Innovative Recruitment or Expedited Disability Discrimination?\u201d by Lydia X. Z. Brown, Ridhi Shetty, and Michelle Richardson affected me on a personal level because I had recently taken an online personality test during a routine job application. And lastly, I watched the documentary Persona<\/em>, which explored the dark side of personality testing and artificial intelligence (AI), including the risks for discrimination against many protected groups. I suddenly realized that AI technologies for human resources could be systematizing bias on a massive scale, so I decided to turn my research focus to this topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n