Journal of Australian Studies

ISSN: 1444-3058 (Print) 1835-6419 (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rjau20

Cultural Diversity in Leadership: What Does It Say

About Australian Multiculturalism?

Tim Soutphommasane

To cite this article: Tim Soutphommasane (2017) Cultural Diversity in Leadership: What Does
It Say About Australian Multiculturalism?, Journal of Australian Studies, 41:3, 287-295, DOI:
10.1080/14443058.2017.1342686

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JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN STUDIES, 2017
VOL. 41, NO. 3, 287–295
https://doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2017.1342686

Cultural Diversity in Leadership: What Does It Say About

Australian Multiculturalism?
Tim Soutphommasane
Australian Human Rights Commission, Sydney, NSW, Australia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Australia is frequently described as a success story of immigration Multiculturalism; national
and multiculturalism. This has been a part of recent Australian identity; cultural diversity;
self-understanding and national myth-making. Yet, such a leadership; myth
description may belie other realities. For all of Australian society’s
celebration of cultural diversity, the leadership of its major
institutions remains largely devoid of cultural diversity. This article
draws upon recent research into the cultural composition of
groups of senior leaders in Australian business, politics,
government and civil society. It examines the biases and barriers
that may contribute to the status quo. It considers the
organisational preconditions of better representation of cultural
diversity in Australian leadership—namely, in the realms of
leadership, systems and culture. The issue of cultural diversity and
leadership, however, cannot be considered only in organisational
terms. It also implicates larger societal questions about the current
limits of Australian multiculturalism.

Introduction
It is widely accepted that Australia is a multicultural society and, indeed, is an exemplar of
such a society. Australian society is among the most culturally diverse in the world. More
than this, Australia’s multicultural character is normative: it implicates how Australian
society understands its national identity as being constituted, in part, by its diversity.1
Australia is frequently described not only as an immigrant nation but is also upheld as
an example of a highly mobile society, one where immigrants and their children can
advance well beyond their initial circumstances.2
Students of nationalism have long asserted that nations are defined by myth and willed
self-creation: a nation’s existence, as Renan said, is based on a “daily plebiscite”.3 Any
national myth will contain elements of truth, literal and metaphorical. Yet any national

CONTACT Tim Soutphommasane racediscriminationcommissioner@humanrights.gov.au

1
Tim Soutphommasane, Don’t Go Back to Where You Came from: Why Multiculturalism Works (Sydney: NewSouth Books,
2012); Tim Soutphommasane, Reclaiming Patriotism: Nation-Building for Australian Progressives (Melbourne: Cambridge
University Press, 2009); cf. James Curran and Stuart Ward, The Unknown Nation (Melbourne: Melbourne University
Press, 2010).
2
See George Megalogenis, The Australian Moment (Melbourne: Penguin Group (Australia), 2012). For an overview of public
opinion about immigration and multiculturalism, see Andrew Markus, Mapping Social Cohesion: The Scanlon Foundation
Surveys 2016 (Melbourne: Monash University, 2016), http://scanlonfoundation.org.au/research/surveys.
3
Ernest Renan, “What Is a Nation?,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990).
© 2017 International Australian Studies Association
288 T. SOUTPHOMMASANE

myth may also conceal or disguise. While there is evidently much that is true about the
description of Australian society as multicultural, such a description may also belie
other realities.
This article examines one ambivalent reality of contemporary Australian society. For all
of Australian society’s triumphant celebration of cultural diversity, this diversity remains
largely absent among the senior leaders of Australian institutions. There remains an ethnic
and cultural default in Australian leadership, confirming the view put forward by some
observers that, “for now, Australia remains a strongly Anglo-Celtic country”.4
To date, there has only been limited attention paid to this aspect of Australia’s multi-
cultural experience. While various literature has examined the structural and institutional
aspects of racism and multiculturalism, there has been a dearth of empirical studies of cul-
tural diversity and leadership.5 Drawing upon recently conducted research into the cul-
tural composition of Australian senior leadership in business, politics, government and
civil society, this article highlights that any Australian multiculturalism will remain incom-
plete until it is more fully reflected and represented within Australian institutions.
This article’s first section outlines the methodological approach to studying cultural
backgrounds. The second gives a breakdown of the cultural backgrounds of Australian
senior leaders in business, politics, government and higher education. The third examines
the biases and barriers that may contribute to an under-representation of cultural diversity
within those cohorts. The article then considers the organisational preconditions of chan-
ging the status quo, before reflecting upon the political implications of Australian multi-
cultural myth-making.

Cultural diversity and leadership: methodology

The data on cultural diversity within leadership, upon which this article draws, was col-
lected through a working group formed in 2015 (which the author convened). The
group consisted of representatives from the Australian Human Rights Commission, the
University of Sydney Business School, Westpac, PwC Australia and Telstra.6
The working group examined the cultural composition of senior leaders in Australian
business, politics, government and civil society. Its attention was confined to the ranks of
chief executives and equivalents—namely, chief executive officers in the ASX 200 compa-
nies, representatives and senators in Federal Parliament, secretaries and heads of federal
and state government departments, and the vice-chancellors of universities. The focus
of the working group was limited to these cohorts because of the difficulties in studying
the cultural backgrounds of organisational leaders at lower levels. As there remains
limited data collected about cultural diversity, focusing attention on chief executives
gave the working group the best prospect of generating credible data.
The working group’s method involved two stages. First, senior leaders’ cultural back-
grounds were identified. In determining an individual leader’s background, the working
4
Nick Bryant, The Rise and Fall of Australia (Sydney: Random House Australia, 2014), 239.
5
See Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Sydney: Pluto Press, 1998);
Ghassan Hage, Against Paranoid Nationalism (Sydney: Pluto Press, 2003); Suvendrini Perera, Australia and the Insular
Imagination (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
6
Australian Human Rights Commission, Leading for Change: A Blueprint for Cultural Diversity and Inclusive Leadership, July
2016, https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/race-discrimination/publications/leading-change-blueprint-cultural-
diversity-and-inclusive.
 JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN STUDIES 289

group examined information including their publicly available biographical details and
public statements about their background, their name and place of birth, and also photo-
graphs taken of them.
Such a methodology is consistent with academic and industry studies of cultural back-
ground. For example, in its study of corporate Australia, Diversity Council Australia
measured cultural diversity based on the surnames of board and senior executive managers
in ASX 200 companies.7 Sociological research in the United States concerning the cultural
backgrounds of chief executive officers in Fortune 500 companies has also resorted to using
biographical information about race and ethnicity, as well as photographs.8 Similarly, man-
agement researchers in Canada have relied upon public information such as captioned
photos and biographies to identify leaders and their cultural backgrounds.9
Second, after the specific cultural backgrounds of leaders were determined (e.g.
English, French, Italian, Chinese), leaders were categorised into one of four groups,
according to whether they had an Indigenous, Anglo-Celtic, European or non-European
cultural background. These four classifications of cultural background were seen as
appropriate in light of Australia’s demographic history. They reflect the main waves
of immigration that have primarily shaped the composition of Australian society
today: (i) the predominantly British and Irish population that emerged following the
colonisation of Australia, (ii) the European immigration that occurred in the years
immediately following the Second World War and (iii) the non-European immigration
that emerged with the dismantling of the White Australia policy in the 1970s and the
arrival of southeast Asian refugees.10
It should be noted that determining leaders’ cultural backgrounds has, in one important
respect, not involved a reductive element. This is reflected in the fact that leaders are
described as having a certain cultural background, rather than being of a certain cultural
background. To say, for example, that an individual has a non-European background does
not preclude them from also having a European background or an Anglo-Celtic back-
ground (as would be the case with an individual who has a Japanese father and an
Italian mother, or an individual who has a Chinese father and a Scottish mother). The
methodology adopted simply means that, for the purposes of classification, such an indi-
vidual would be described as having a non-European background.11

Cultural diversity and leadership: findings

Across various measures, Australia is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the
world. Its population is drawn from more than 300 ancestries. Approximately twenty-
7
Diversity Council Australia (DCA), Capitalising on Culture: A Study of the Cultural Origins of ASX200 Business Leaders (Sydney:
Diversity Council Australia, 2013). It is not possible to state the exact proportion of the Australian population that has a
non-European background but DCA estimates that 9.6 per cent of the population has an Asian background. Using tailored
software, DCA’s research suggests that name analysis has an accuracy rate of higher than ninety per cent.
8
Richard L. Zweigenhaft and G. William Domhoff, The New CEOs: Women, African-American, Latino, and Asian American
Leaders of Fortune 500 Companies (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011); Richard L. Zweigenhaft, “Diver-
sity Among CEOs and Corporate Directors: Has the Heyday Come and Gone?” Paper presented at the annual meeting of
the American Sociological Association, New York, 2013.
9
See Wendy Cukier et al., DiverseCity Counts 3: A Snapshot of Diverse Leadership in the GTA (Toronto: Ted Rogers School of
Management, Ryerson University, 2016). Between 2009 and 2013, researchers at Ryerson University conducted eight
studies using this methodology.
10
Australian Human Rights Commission, Leading for Change, 28.
11
Australian Human Rights Commission, Leading for Change, 30.
290 T. SOUTPHOMMASANE

eight per cent of people in Australia were born overseas, with an additional twenty per cent
having a parent born overseas.12 Close to twenty per cent of people speak a language other
than English at home.13
There are, however, no official statistics on the precise ethnic and cultural composition
of the Australian population. While this makes drawing an exact picture of Australia’s cul-
tural diversity difficult, some extrapolations are possible. Research conducted by Diversity
Council Australia estimates that approximately thirty-two per cent of the general popu-
lation has a non-Anglo-Celtic background, with more than ten per cent of the population
having a non-European background.14
When compared against this general measure of cultural diversity, the composition of
Australian leadership does not convey a multicultural success story. This is despite the
relatively high level of social mobility exhibited in Australian society—something reflected
in the fact that the children of immigrants, on average, outperform the children of Aus-
tralian-born parents in educational attainment and employment outcomes. The apparent
over-representation of cultural diversity among high-achieving students in high schools,
universities and graduate intakes is not remotely replicated within the ranks of leaders
within organisations.
In corporate Australia, the ranks of senior leaders remain overwhelmingly dominated
by those of Anglo-Celtic and European backgrounds. Among the 201 chief executives of
ASX 200 companies, seventy-seven per cent have an Anglo-Celtic background and eigh-
teen per cent have a European background. Only ten chief executives—or five per cent—
have non-European backgrounds. None of the 201 chief executives has an Indigenous
background.
Similar patterns prevail elsewhere. In the current Australian parliament, seventy-seven
per cent of the 226 elected members in the House of Representatives and the Senate have
an Anglo-Celtic background. Eighteen per cent have a European background. Those who
have a non-European background make up four per cent of the total, while those who have
an Indigenous background comprise just under two per cent.15
Cultural diversity is even lower within the ranks of the federal ministry. Of the forty-
two members of the ministry, eighty-one per cent have an Anglo-Celtic background,
seventeen per cent have a European background; there is one member of the ministry
who has an Indigenous background (two per cent), though none have a non-European
background.16
In the Australian public service, diversity is also dramatically under-represented. Of
the 124 heads of federal and state departments, it is notable that there is only one who
has a non-European background (less than one per cent) and one who has an Indigen-
ous background (less than one per cent). Eighty-three per cent of departmental heads

12
Australian Bureau of Statistics, “3412.0 – Migration, Australia, 2014–15”, http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Latest-
products/3412.0Main%20Features12014-15?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=3412.0&issue=2014-15&num
=&view (accessed May 31, 2016).
13
Australian Bureau of Statistics, “2011 Census Factsheet: Languages Spoken at Home,” http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/
censushome.nsf/ home/mediafactsheetsfirst/$file/Census-factsheetlanguagesspokenathome.doc (accessed May 31,
2016).
14
Diversity Council Australia, Capitalising on Culture.
15
These figures are based on members of the Senate and the House of Representatives in the 45th Parliament, following
the 2 July 2016 federal election.
16
These figures reflect the composition of the federal ministry appointed following the 2 July 2016 federal election.
 JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN STUDIES 291

Table 1. Cultural backgrounds of Australia’s senior leaders (in percentage terms).

Indigenous Anglo-Celtic European Non-European
ASX 200 (CEOs) 0 76.6 18.4 5.0
Federal Parliament (MPs and senators) 1.8 76.5 17.7 4.0
Federal ministry (ministers and assistant ministers) 2.4 81.0 16.6 0
Federal and state public service (secretaries and 0.8 83.1 15.3 0.8
heads of departments)
Universities (vice-chancellors) 0 82.5 15.0 2.5

have an Anglo-Celtic background, with fifteen per cent having a European

background.
Among our universities, it is even worse. All the forty university vice-chancellors either
have an Anglo-Celtic background (82.5 per cent) or a European background (fifteen per
cent). There is only one vice-chancellor who has a non-European background (2.5 per
cent) and none with an Indigenous background (Table 1).

Bias and barriers

These numbers speak volumes about one thing: Australian society is not making the most
of its cultural diversity. Its multicultural character appears absent from the leadership of its
major economic, political, governmental and civil societal institutions.
Bias and discrimination appear to play some role in this. There is mounting evidence
about professionals from culturally diverse backgrounds reporting that organisations
understand leadership in ways that privilege what are considered typically Anglo cultural
styles.17 International research on leadership and race also suggests that in predominantly
white work environments, leaders who are people of colour may face disadvantages
because they are not perceived as legitimate and because power inequities in organisations
privilege whiteness.18
Some may argue the under-representation of cultural diversity in leadership may
simply reflect the relatively short amount of time that Australian society has been multi-
cultural. It may be argued that, with time, there will be natural improvements. Such argu-
ments are familiar. Also familiar are suggestions that a principle of merit should guide
decisions about appointment and promotion. According to this view, taking an active
concern with representation elevates equality of outcomes above equality of opportunity.
It may be comforting to believe that decisions in organisations are guided purely by
considerations based on merit. Indeed, most people would endorse the meritocratic
ideal—the idea of careers open to talent. However, the ideal is not always realised in prac-
tice; only rarely is it realised in practice. The level playing field, which an ideal of meritoc-
racy presumes, remains elusive. More often than not, merit can be defined by those in
power to mean code for someone who looks like them. It can disguise power and privilege.
Certainly, the idea of leadership is bound up in elusive notions of charisma and auth-
ority, which open the way to bias and to reproductions of the status quo. Often such biases
17
Sonia Ospina and Erica Foldy, “A Critical Review of Race and Ethnicity in the Leadership Literature: Surfacing Context,
Power and the Collective Dimensions of Leadership,” The Leadership Quarterly 20, no. 6 (2009): 876–96.
18
Nicola Pless and Thomas Maak, “Building an Inclusive Diversity Culture: Principles, Processes and Practice,” Journal of
Business Ethics 54, no. 2 (2004): 130.
292 T. SOUTPHOMMASANE

concern physical attributes. Researchers find, for example, a correlation between being tall
and attaining managerial positions.19 Others indicate that attractiveness may also be a
strong predictor of decisions about those who are put in positions of leadership.20
This illustrates the clear limits to our cognitive ability. Psychologists refer to the “halo
effect”: having positive feelings about the overall impression of a person may influence our
assessment of their character or ability. Where we have a positive first impression of
someone, we will tend to believe that everything else about them is positive. There can
also be a reverse halo effect: a negative first impression of someone means we will tend
to be negative about everything else about them.21
As it concerns cultural diversity in leadership, bias and discrimination can play out in a
number of ways, depending on the specific cultural backgrounds involved.
In the United States, sociologists studying the power elite observe that many of the
African-American men and women in positions of power seem to have very light skin
tone or are perceived as non-threatening. They find that, “the less different people were
from the white male norm that was dominant in the power elite, the more likely they
were to be deemed acceptable”.22 Similarly, the same sociologists indicate that most of
the Latino-background CEOs in the Fortune 500 companies were light skinned and
Anglo-looking.23
For other groups, bias and discrimination may focus not so much on skin colour but on
cultural traits associated with one’s ethnicity. This has been the focus of much of the com-
mentary concerning the “bamboo ceiling”—namely, the barriers that those of Asian back-
grounds face in professional workplaces dominated by Anglo and Western norms.24
To some extent, these barriers reflect stereotypes about those from Asian backgrounds
being self-effacing, quiet, even submissive. As Jane Hyun explains, some of these stereo-
types may reflect certain dispositions associated with Asian cultures. In highly individua-
listic societies, those who speak or shout the loudest are noticed the most or rewarded, a
dynamic captured by the adage “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”. Yet, within Asian cul-
tures, a different norm may prevail: “the loudest duck gets shot”.25
These barriers seem to exist within Australian organisations. A survey into Asian-back-
ground talent conducted by Diversity Council Australia highlighted that only eighteen per
cent of surveyed workers with Asian backgrounds felt their workplaces were free of biases
and stereotypes about culture. Approximately sixty-one per cent reported feeling pressure
to conform to what are seen as Anglo styles of leadership, which emphasise self-promotion
and assertiveness.26

19
Erik Lindvist, “Height and Leadership,” Review of Economics and Statistics 94, no. 4 (2012): 1191–6; Donald B. Egolf and
Lloyd E. Corder, “Height Differences of Low and High Job Status, Female and Male Corporate Employees,” Sex Roles 24, no.
5 (1991): 365–73.
20
Daniel E. Re and David I. Perrett, “The Effects of Facial Adiposity on Attractiveness and Perceived Leadership Ability,” Quar-
terly Journal of Experimental Psychology 67, no. 4 (2014): 676–86.
21
Kevin R. Murphy, Robert A. Jako, and Rebecca L. Anhalt, “Nature and Consequences of Halo Error: A Critical Analysis,”
Journal of Applied Psychology 78, no. 2 (1993): 218–25; Edward L. Thorndike, “A Constant Error in Psychological
Ratings,” Journal of Applied Psychology 4, no. 1 (1920): 25–9.
22
Zweigenhaft and Domhoff, The New CEOs, 45.
23
Zweigenhaft and Domhoff, The New CEOs, 63.
24
For the seminal treatment of this, see Jane Hyun, Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians (New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 2005).
25
Hyun, Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling, 38–9.
26
Diversity Council of Australia, Cracking the Cultural Ceiling: Future Proofing Your Business in the Asian Century (Sydney:
Diversity Council of Australia, 2014), 16.
 JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN STUDIES 293

The case for change: leadership, systems and culture

The case for cultural diversity can be emphatically made. Simply put, a more diverse work-
force makes for better decision-making. In a notable study, economist Scott E. Page found
that a group drawn from a diverse pool of people was superior to a group drawn from
talented individual thinkers in solving difficult problems.27 A unique kind of learning
takes place when people from different backgrounds come together, one that does not
occur within groups that are homogenous. Experiences with diversity—including cultural
diversity—are associated with improved cognitive skill and intellectual self-confidence.28
Analysis conducted by management consultants McKinsey also indicates a positive
relationship between a more diverse leadership team and better financial performance.
In a study of 366 companies from the U.K., Canada, Latin America and the United
States, McKinsey found that companies in the top quartile of cultural diversity were
thirty-five per cent more likely to have financial returns above the national industry
median.29
Changing the status quo implicates a societal question. However, at an organisational
level, there are a number of clear preconditions.
First, there is a need for leadership on cultural diversity. Leaders must communicate
that cultural diversity is not a matter of second-order importance. For example, it is some-
times assumed that action on cultural diversity may need to wait until organisations com-
plete their efforts to achieve greater gender equality (that there may not be enough
“bandwidth” in an organisation to handle both gender and cultural diversity as priorities).
Genuine leadership on cultural diversity should not involve viewing cultural diversity as
an issue to pursue only after gender equality is achieved.
Second, two other ingredients are needed for change: systems and culture. In systemic
terms, there is enormous scope for enhanced gathering and reporting of data on cultural
diversity. The current data on cultural diversity remains poor when compared to data on
gender diversity. Whereas, for example, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency requires
the collection and reporting of gender equality data from all companies with 100 or more
staff, there is no equivalent requirement on culture.30
With better data on cultural diversity, it would be possible to consider strengthening
organisational accountability. A strong case exists for considering targets on cultural
diversity, to send a clear signal that the issue is a priority.
At the same time, targets are not a cure-all solution. Rather, targets need to be sup-
ported by other policies that encourage the development of diverse talent. Organisations
should mitigate some of the stereotype risks that may accompany the appointment of cul-
turally diverse talent to leadership positions. If those promoted through targets should
27
Scott E. Page, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2007); Juliet Bourke, Which Two Heads Are Better Than One? How Diverse Teams Create Break-
through Ideas and Make Smarter Decisions (Sydney: Australian Institute of Company Directors, 2016).
28
For a useful review of the literature on these points, see Deborah S. Holoien, Do Differences Make a Difference? The Effects
of Diversity on Learning, Intergroup Outcomes, and Civic Engagement, Trustee Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), http://www.princeton.edu/reports/2013/diversity.
29
Vivian Hunt, Dennis Layton, and Sara Prince, Why Diversity Matters (New York: McKinsey & Company, 2015), http://www.
mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-diversity-matters. The findings of the study also indi-
cated that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity were fifteen per cent more likely to have financial
returns above their respective national industry medians. At least on the evidence of this study, the benefits of cultural
diversity may be even greater than those generated by gender diversity.
30
Obligation to report under the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth), https://www.wgea.gov.au/report.
294 T. SOUTPHOMMASANE

perform poorly, the result may be to entrench unhelpful perceptions about culture and
leadership.31
Finally, the task of developing a better culture requires that leaders and organisations
counter biases, both unconscious and conscious. This requires something more than
just consciousness-raising about cultural diversity. It must present people with strategies
to eliminate bias and apply them in the everyday realm. It should be about encouraging
people to take the perspective of others, about promoting contact with those who are
different. The best approach seems to be one that transforms the experience of people.
Unconscious racial bias is most effectively reduced when people listen to stories with
high self-involvement: for example, scenarios that prompt people to ask themselves if
they would react differently to a person if they belonged to a different race.32
The other part of developing organisational culture concerns professional development.
Action is required to ensure that those of culturally diverse backgrounds can step up to
leadership positions. This means equipping talent with the right set of “soft skills”, and
ensuring that they all, regardless of cultural background, have access to the unwritten cur-
riculum of power and leadership.
Greater cultural self-understanding is a prerequisite for this. People need to understand
how culture can shape behaviours and perceptions. Just as some may need to be made
aware of their own biases, some people may need to understand their own culturally influ-
enced attitudes or approaches.
Consider some of the behaviours that have been identified in discussions about a
bamboo ceiling. Against a background of possible bias or stereotyping, it makes sense
for those of Asian backgrounds to be mindful of how their behaviour in the workplace
may be perceived or interpreted. For example, any deference to seniority or any tendency
of self-effacement could be readily interpreted as reflecting a general cultural pattern of
behaviour, which may not be conducive to positive assessments about suitability for
leadership.33
The issue is by no means confined to just one particular cultural group. Within the
American professional setting, for example, many African-American men have spoken
of having to calibrate their demeanour in their offices. As described in one study, this
may involve “striving to appear focused at the office but not too aggressive; hungry but
not threatening; well-dressed but not showy; talented but not too damn talented”.34
Being mindful of such factors does not exonerate bias. It does not seem appropriate to
suggest that culturally diverse talent must fix themselves without there also being some
effort to fix stereotypes. But professional development for culturally diverse talent must
involve greater attention to cultural self-understanding and to ensuring greater access
to the unwritten or hidden rules of leadership.

31
Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam, “The Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women Are Over-Represented in Precarious
Leadership Positions,” British Journal of Management 16, no. 2 (2005): 81–90. For some of the critical commentary regard-
ing diversity targets, see Meir Shemla and Corinne Post, “The Dark Side of Silicon Valley Diversity Targets,” Newsweek,
September 19, 2015, http://www.newsweek.com/quotas-are-wrong-way-make-silicon-valley-more-diverse-374223.
32
Francesca Gino, “What Facebook’s Anti-bias Training Program Gets Right,” Harvard Business Review, August 24, 2015.
https://hbr.org/2015/08/whatfacebooks- anti-bias-training-program-gets-right.
33
Hyun, Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling.
34
Ellen McGirt, “Why Race and Culture Matter in the C-suite,” Fortune, January 22, 2016, http://fortune.com/black-
executives-men-c-suite/.
 JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN STUDIES 295

Conclusion
As alluded to above, changing the status quo on the representation of cultural diversity
within Australian leadership implicates a societal question: one that goes beyond questions
of organisational leadership, systems and culture. While improvements in these areas will
foster the conditions for improvement, any genuine change will require something more.
Genuine change requires, among other things, an acceptance that multiculturalism
must involve more than cultural celebration. Australian national myth-making on cultural
diversity, to some degree, rehearses the idea that multiculturalism is about cultural differ-
ences—that, indeed, Australians are to find unity in the very idea of diversity. It is open to
question whether a more muscular multiculturalism is needed: one that implies less of an
aesthetic sensibility and more of a civic commitment to equal opportunity.35
This kind of multiculturalism implies a willingness to break down structures of social
power and privilege, and a preparedness to embrace cultural change within institutions. It
recognises that any triumph of food, dance and festivals may only go so far. Whether Aus-
tralian society can take this next leap of cultural evolution represents a fundamental chal-
lenge to its multicultural self-image.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

35
Soutphommasane, Don’t Go Back to Where You Came from.