Exploring Cognitive Dissonance in Diversity Recruitment Policy Designers. A case study

This article examines how designers of diversity recruitment policies (PRD) manage value conflicts arising from the tensions between their personal values and those imposed by their organizational roles. This issue is particularly significant as companies have generally overlooked it, assuming that persistent dysfunctions in recruitment practices primarily stem from poor appropriation of management tools between designers and users. We posit that these dysfunctions are primarily conditioned by the degree of adherence of PRD designers to the organizational principles they are supposed to embody. By focusing on the upstream issues of management tool appropriation between designers and users, we aim to identify intrapersonal value conflicts specific to the designers and how they subsequently manage them. Drawing on cognitive dissonance theory (CDT) within the framework of a case study involving managers at the intersection of two roles (DRP designers and recruiters), we demonstrate that concrete recruitment situations lead these individuals to become aware of unresolved value conflicts. In action, they adopt three main strategies to reduce these cognitive dissonances (CD): Behavioral transgression: when the values imposed by the company are unsustainable in light of their conception of "legitimate recruitment" ; Behavioral submission: when the situation does not allow them to express their disagreements ; Suppressed dissent: where the subjects' ideas and actual behaviors resist without the organization knowing, manifesting as clandestine actions.