Excellence, diversity or efficiency? “Implicit bias” in appoint-ments committees as conflicting goals in social practices

Diversity management aims to reduce the effects of implicit bias on decision-making in academic recruitment processes. However, conventional diversity training workshops have thusfar shown limited impact on practical diversity outcomes, since such workshops convey little practical knowledge that can be applied in typical recruitment situations (e.g., search committee meetings about hiring new professors). We conceptualize implicit bias as a social practice rather than as an individual attitude. The often conflicting goals of diversity, excellence and efficiency in appointment proceedings can thus be operationalized and translated into testable learning goals. Using vignettes based on anonymised data aggregated across diciplines from academic recruitment procedures at a Swiss university, a web-based training was developed that deploys “serious gaming” to simulate the social practices of implicit bias in short video scenes. These scenes convey both reflective and practical knowledge for future search committee members.