Diversifying Leadership within the New Zealand Public Service: How institutional will becomes an institutional wall

Abstract

<p>Aotearoa New Zealand will experience significant growth in its diverse population over the next 10 years. In response to this, the New Zealand Public Service wants to diversify its leadership, which is almost 90% NZ European, to better reflect the communities it serves. This thesis investigates how aligned Public Service policies are with current scholarship on diversifying leadership using institutionalism as a key political ideology. The methodology is a three-step process. First, an Official Information Act request was sent to 23 government agencies asking for their policies on diversity and inclusion, funding for diversity and inclusion, internal complaint processes, and how they knew they were not discriminating against their diverse workforce. Second, a thematic analysis of the scholarship was conducted, and third, a reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse 1,500 pages of government documents received in response to the Official Information Act request. The findings demonstrate that there are currently formal and visible facilitators for diversifying leadership, but they are largely ineffective due to informal and invisible hurdles that are real and ignored. The mixed understanding throughout the D&I policies within the formal bicultural and implied multicultural frameworks adopted was one surprise finding that would need more research. It serves as a stark reminder that Māori-Crown obligations and Diversity and Inclusion initiatives are not easily reconciled, and that leaders in the public service still have a lot of work to do to overcome their own resistance to change, intersectional inclusionary practices, and developing a deeper understanding of the connections between formal and informal rules and norms, and the significance of the latter, in order to enable the former. According to these findings, the New Zealand Public Service may improve the possibility that its leadership will be more diverse if it recognises and addresses the informal, invisible barriers and increases the efficiency of the formal, visible facilitators.</p>