Broadening Undergraduate Student Perspectives on Equity in Operations: A Summary of Materials and Experiences

In this paper, the authors describe efforts to improve business students’ ability to recognize bias in operations management techniques, specifically those related to employee assessment and analytics-driven business decisions, through a transformative learning theory approach. In a week-long short course taught within a larger core operations undergraduate class, transformative learning was fostered by exposing students to equity examples, with a particular focus on antiracism and antipoverty scenarios. Previously unknown material challenged students’ personal meaning schemes, thus precipitating the “disorienting dilemma” that precedes transformative learning. The cornerstone piece was a case study based on a Black engineering manager in a technology company, who detailed his struggle to stay or leave given the company’s lack of hiring equity despite its public espousal of diversity, equity, and inclusion values. The short course introduced a flexible framework for assessing equity based on process, intentionality, and top-down versus bottom-up inequality. Evidence of transformative learning evident in student feedback and reflective papers suggests the utility of this approach in the operations management classroom and beyond. Funding: This work was supported by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, University of Lynchburg [DIIG Grant]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ited.2023.0040.