Changing Hearts and Minds: Evidence from a Symposium on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Abstract

The accounting profession and academic institutions have expressed solidarity with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles and recognize the importance of DEI programs in pedagogy to enhance students’ and new accounting professionals’ awareness of DEI issues. However, despite the collective acknowledgement by the accounting profession and academic institutions regarding the importance of DEI, no research, to our knowledge, in the business or accounting higher education literature has empirically evaluated the effectiveness of specific DEI programming for enhancing students’ awareness of and attitudes toward racial issues. We fill the gap by investigating the effectiveness of a diversity symposium and a reflective writing exercise on undergraduate accounting students’ awareness and attitudes regarding racial issues. Taken together, our results suggest that both pedagogical interventions incrementally improve students’ knowledge and understanding of these issues. Our results have important implications for accounting higher education by providing implementable methods to enhance student awareness and attitudes.