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Leadership
Inclusiveness is not a trend. It’s a test of leadership.
Business schools have a responsibility to develop leaders who can navigate complexity without compromising on values. As corporations pull back from DEI commitments under political pressure, David Bach argues that now is the moment for business schools to stand firm – joining those who continue to lead by example.
In moments of upheaval, people look to institutions for more than reassurance – they look for direction. They want to know what their schools, their employers, and their leaders stand for. Business schools have a unique responsibility in this regard. While governments may be expected to strike a balance, our mandate is different. We are not neutral observers – we’re actively shaping the mindset and moral compass of tomorrow’s decision-makers. And in today’s fractured world, that means preparing future leaders to navigate complexity without losing sight of their values.
Right now, the signal from corporate America is a decisive step away from Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Google has dropped diversity hiring targets. Walmart and Meta have scaled back public-facing DEI efforts. WPP – one of the most influential voices in global advertising – removed the phrase “diversity, equity and inclusion” from its latest annual report after political pressure. Mastercard, which last year proclaimed that, “Diversity, equity and inclusion underpin everything we do,” is now focused on “creating an environment that benefits and provides equal opportunities for all our employees.” And Salesforce moved from affirming in 2024 that “Equality is a core value” to merely noting a year later that the company’s “approach to equality is firmly rooted in compliance with federal law.” European companies operating in the US have not been immune from this pressure. For instance, Swiss pharma leaders Roche and Novartis have scaled back diversity hiring initiatives. What was championed just a few years ago as strategic leadership is now being reframed, in some companies, as reputational risk.
Some of this is defensive, driven by legal uncertainties and threats of market exclusion. Some of it is reactive, fueled by cultural backlash. But the effect is clear: a slow, steady walk-back from what many had only just begun to take seriously. This retreat isn’t just short-sighted. It’s dangerous. It undermines the progress made and sends a message that inclusion is expendable when the political climate shifts.
Crucially, while many companies are retreating, others are holding firm. In the US, Apple, Costco, Uber, Microsoft, and JPMorgan Chase are among those who have reaffirmed their commitments. Leading European companies are also defying White House pressure, often despite a substantial US presence. “Nothing has changed,” UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said back in February, underscoring that the company’s approach to DEI is “not dictated by any new political changes in any jurisdiction.” Instead, he said that a commitment to diversity and inclusion is a “cultural issue we have as part of the way we run the firm.” When asked by journalists whether Maersk remained committed to DEI, CEO Vincent Clerc was unambiguous: “We are not going to do anything different.” “We stay true to our values; always have been and always will be,” added Ingrid Snelderwaard, the shipping giant’s Chief DEI Officer. Others are making the business case. “I know what diversity has brought us on the management board at the top reporting level,” explained Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing. “That’s why we are strong supporters of these programs. We can see how Deutsche Bank has benefited from them.” Still, others stress the importance of keeping ahead of regulation. Energy leader Vattenfall, for example, highlights its progress and pledges to “elevate DEI efforts to new heights in 2025” in anticipation of “more robust DEI legislation expected in Europe.”
At this watershed moment, business schools cannot afford to abandon their commitment to diversity and inclusion. Instead, we must stand with those who embrace inclusive leadership as a moral imperative and good business. If our role is to prepare leaders for complexity, adversity, and dealing with challenging political environments, this is the moment to prove it. We must resist the instinct to retreat – and instead, lead with purpose. This is why I regret the decision by AACSB, the world’s leading accreditation body for business schools, to drop “diversity and inclusion” from its 10 Guiding Principles and Expectations for Accredited Schools, and to ask schools instead to focus on the vague idea of “community and connectedness.”
Leadership, I learned, isn’t just about managing through turbulence. It’s about signaling what matters.
Act on values – even when it’s difficult
Before I joined IMD, I served on the leadership team at Yale School of Management. I still remember how, as the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements gained momentum, students turned to us – not just for commentary, but for direction. “Where does the school stand?” they wanted to know.
In these moments of societal fracture, silence is not neutrality. People look to institutions – especially educational ones – for moral orientation. Leadership, I learned, isn’t just about managing through turbulence. It’s about signaling what matters.
That lesson shaped my thinking when I arrived at IMD in 2020. While the DEI conversation in Europe had long focused on gender – and to a lesser extent on sexual orientation and religious inclusion – the reckoning around race and structural inequality had not played out with the same intensity as in the US. Some asked: is this even relevant here? The answer, as we discovered, was yes.
Inclusion isn’t a US issue. It’s a leadership imperative.
Even in a country like Switzerland – often seen as tolerant and progressive – colleagues and students of color told us plainly that their experiences were different. They felt the impact of bias and exclusion, even if it took subtler forms. If we took seriously our mission to develop global leaders, we had to take seriously their realities.
So, we began embedding inclusive leadership across the institution. This was initiated by my predecessor Jean-François Manzoni, who led IMD from 2017 to 2024, and who hired IMD’s first chief equity, inclusion, and diversity officer, Josefine van Zanten. Josefine, in turn, coordinated and led many of the efforts you see in place today at IMD. In this, she was supported by a DEI Council comprised of faculty, students, and staff, which I proudly joined as an inaugural member.
Much of the institution got involved: the faculty recruiting team, the research team, the MBA team, and the alumni team. We started out with a fairly bold ambition, but it’s taken four or five years to get IMD to a place where this is embedded in much of our activity. We built on our expertise and published numerous IbyIMD articles and whitepapers on measuring inclusion, inclusive language and images, and, most recently, on bias in AI. We have also reexamined the cases we teach – recognizing that if all our CEO protagonists are white men, we’re sending an implicit message about who gets to lead. We built DEI into our MBA, EMBA, and executive programs not as a side topic, but as a leadership competency.
Crucially, we started having real conversations inside our community. In one program, we ask participants to reflect on a time they felt excluded. Everyone has one. For me, it was being picked last in school sports – minor, perhaps, but memorable. That simple exercise builds empathy. It humanizes the abstract. And from there, real dialogue begins.
These conversations have reshaped not just our programming, but our culture. Our DEI Council has created opportunities for colleagues to share lived experiences – from navigating Switzerland in a wheelchair to being a Black professional in a predominantly white society. That kind of sharing breaks silos. It builds understanding. It fosters real inclusion.
Despite our progress, we are still at the very beginning. The road towards becoming an inclusive organization, one where each community member has a strong sense of belonging and each of us can thrive, is long and windy, with bumps, twists, and turns. But the destination is clear. At IMD, we are resetting our DEI Council for the next phase – and we’re making inclusion central to our broader employee experience and well-being efforts.
We’re not here to chase headlines or appease culture wars. We’re here to prepare leaders who can navigate complexity, bring people together, and lead with conviction.
Leadership that lasts isn’t performative
The current backlash against DEI has been fueled, in part, by how quickly the language of inclusion became ubiquitous. When something becomes a corporate slogan, it risks becoming performative. When it’s performative, it’s easy to abandon.
That’s why business schools must dig deeper. We’re not here to chase headlines or appease culture wars. We’re here to prepare leaders who can navigate complexity, bring people together, and lead with conviction – even when the climate turns hostile.
That means helping future CEOs understand that DEI isn’t a zero-sum game. DEI is not the opposite of meritocracy – it’s about creating meritocratic organizations for all. Efforts to broaden opportunity shouldn’t be framed as threats to those who’ve historically held power. Inclusive leaders don’t just advocate for underrepresented voices – they engage those who feel unsettled by change and bring them into the process.
At IMD, we’ve encouraged our faculty to explore these themes even if they fall outside their traditional academic domains. I co-authored a case study with my colleague Shih-Han Huang on Rio Tinto’s Everyday Respect initiative, which tackled sexual harassment, discrimination, and bullying head-on. It’s not just about race or gender – it’s about building environments where people feel respected, heard, and valued.
We were proud when a three-person deans panel dispatched last year by AACSB concluded that “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is another example where the school has made significant progress. This was partially in response to feedback from the panel during the previous visit, but the response was also driven by an internal desire to be leading in this area. As a result, the Institute has not only made significant progress in terms of eliminating barriers for female faculty and staff, but could serve as an example for other schools on how to tackle these challenges.”
That’s not political correctness. That’s leadership.
This is the test
When MBA students or executive education participants ask me how to think about DEI in this environment, my advice is to focus on their values, as a leader and in the context of their organization, to focus less on politics and the performative.
Build teams that reflect the world you serve. Create cultures where people feel they belong. Recognize that people deserve to feel welcomed and included and shouldn’t be experiencing marginalization at work, a place where so many of us spend the best hours of the day. I’ve spoken to many leaders who say their values haven’t changed or their commitment hasn’t changed, and that they merely have to communicate more carefully, particularly if they’re in the US or heavily exposed to the US market. I hope that those who firmly believe in inclusion will indeed continue this important work.
The business case for inclusion is clear. The moral case is even stronger. And the leadership case – that’s the one business schools must champion. The world doesn’t need leaders who wait for consensus. It needs leaders who shape it.
We’re not here to teach what’s fashionable – we’re here to prepare leaders to build better organizations and, by extension, a better world.
The role of business schools: stay the course
Business schools exist to develop principled, future-ready leaders. That mission is incompatible with turning away from a commitment to diversity and inclusion when it seemingly becomes politically inconvenient. We’re not here to teach what’s fashionable – we’re here to prepare leaders to build better organizations and, by extension, a better world.
That’s why at IMD, we’re not scaling back. Because inclusion isn’t a slogan. It’s a long-term investment in trust, performance, and human potential. And because inclusive leadership isn’t a ‘nice to have’. It’s the difference between managing a team – and inspiring one.
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