Professor Betina Szkudlarek of the University of Sydney Business School is helping local and international business leaders embrace inclusive leadership as an essential strategic move – one that has the potential to reshape communities from the inside out.
Sitting at the intersection of inclusive leadership, cross-cultural management and international human resource management, Professor Szkudlarek’s research moves between academic enquiry and on-the-ground collaborations with some of the world’s most complex organisations. These include everyone from the United Nations to global retailers like IKEA, financial firms, and legal practices.
For more than a decade, her work has been focused on the many explorations of what it takes to build workplaces where people from all backgrounds can contribute and belong, and what happens to society when businesses get this right. She helps leaders bring out the best in their employees and creates conditions for people to thrive at work, driven by the belief that workplaces can be powerful sites for building social cohesion that reaches far beyond organisational boundaries. “We’ve wanted to showcase that employers do have, and should have, a much more active, conscious role in shaping social cohesion in the world more broadly,” she explains. This approach allows Betina and her team to translate deep research insights into improved workplace practices, and increasingly, support the social fabric that helps communities and businesses function.
For many organisations, having the ability to build genuine inclusion is fast becoming a competitive differentiator as well as a social responsibility. A recent Edelman Trust Barometer study – one of the largest global surveys examining levels of trust in institutions and societal wellbeing, revealed that mistrust is growing. “We have moved away from polarisation to insularity, meaning we are hesitant or unwilling to trust someone who has different values or different problem-solving approaches or even different cultural backgrounds,” she says.
At the same time, the survey revealed that businesses remain one of the few institutions that people still do trust, and that communities actively expect them to step up. “Social cohesion is key for the business sector to function in the first place,” she says. “Your relationships with your customers and communities within which you work, the well-being and engagement of your workforce, the access to talent are key – are you attracting across all of those domains of diversity, or are you predominantly looking like you are an attractive employer for just one part of the segment?”
The root of the problem, Betina argues, runs deep. Most leaders aren’t failing at inclusion because they lack goodwill – the problem is more complex. “We all operate on stereotypes, positive and negative,” she explains. ”We subconsciously put people and groups in boxes and then in many ways, we judge their suitability and their professionalism based on belonging to that box.”
These implicit judgements can shape decisions at every level – who is hired, who is promoted, who is perceived as capable, and who is quietly excluded (often without intending harm). “Our brains have a lot of implicit knowledge that we activate without our consciousness,” she adds. “It means we’re often judging people subconsciously and really quickly.”
What’s needed, says Betina, is engagement that makes leaders feel safe to examine their own assumptions. “Many people, and in many ways those who need it most, are the most likely to resist learning,” she explains.
Her approach to teaching is very purposeful. “How we work in the inclusive leadership space is really recognising that diversity comes in many shapes and forms – that each and every one of us is diverse,” she says. “By helping people understand and value different perspectives across all forms of difference, we can build workplaces that strengthen social cohesion and foster more connected communities beyond the workplace,” she adds. “In an increasingly polarised socio-political environment, workplaces have an important role to play in minimising divisions and creating spaces where people can engage constructively across differences”. This reframing turns what may be perceived as a threat into an opportunity, and this is where change can begin.
By helping people understand and value different perspectives, we can build workplaces that strengthen social cohesion and foster more connected communities beyond the workplace.
The University of Sydney Business School
Much of what Betina has learned about inclusive leadership was first forged through her extensive research into refugee workforce integration, a field she approached from an angle few others had considered. Rather than focusing only on the experiences of refugees themselves, she turned her attention to employers: what was stopping them from hiring people from refugee backgrounds, and what it would take to change this. “We uncovered multiple misconceptions that employers had in this area,” she explains. Some of those were overtly negative, while others reflected well-intentioned but misinformed assumptions. The result, she explains, is the same regardless of the intent. “It’s a way of excluding someone, or an entire group based on misguided generalisations rather than their actual capabilities.”
Work in the area of refugee inclusion unlocked something bigger for Betina – that workplaces aren’t just sites of economic participation, rather they’re one of the few places in modern life where people from different backgrounds regularly encounter one another. “Workplaces can expose us to way more diversity and make us break some of those misconceptions and stereotypes we’re holding,” she explains. “We want workplaces to embrace this opportunity.”
The strongest example of what this commitment looks like in practice came to life following an unexpected moment at an industry event many years ago. Professor Szkudlarek was at the Employers Network for Refugee Inclusion event when the National Head of Diversity and Inclusion from IKEA approached her: "She said, ‘I know you, because I used your research to help build a business case for our refugee inclusion program in Australia.’”
A formal research partnership between IKEA Australia and the University of Sydney Business School was born in that moment. IKEA embedded the work directly into the rollout of their refugee employment program, improving the approach in real-time as it expanded across stores nationally. “We placed our highly skilled PhD student, now Dr Priya Roy, to conduct research alongside the program’s launch. This enabled her to advance her doctoral study, while providing real-life insights to the organisation. The organisation was able to learn directly from the research and improve the program as it was being rolled out,” says Betina.
This collaboration has since grown into a major global study commissioned by IKEA’s headquarters – an investigation across 14 markets into what works, what doesn’t and how IKEA should think about expanding its global refugee inclusion strategy. What made the partnership all the more powerful, was the combination of research and independence that only a university team can provide. “We have the depth of knowledge and sensitivity to the topic that enables us to gather far more nuanced insights than external consultants typically can,” says Betina.
The Business School brings something different to the mix – genuine expertise accumulated over years, access to perspectives that internal teams rarely reach, and no commercial stake in a particular outcome. “We’re not selling anything – we’re genuinely committed to understanding what works and learning from this.”
For IKEA, their Change the Narrative campaign went beyond workforce initiative to reflect a broader ambition that employers can actively reshape how society perceives people from refugee backgrounds. For Betina and her team, the lessons from IKEA inspired a broader research agenda: “We wanted to showcase that employers can have a much more active, conscious role in strengthening social cohesion in the world more broadly.”
We wanted to showcase that employers can have a much more active, conscious role in reshaping social cohesion in the world more broadly.
The University of Sydney Business School
Now, having spent more than a decade at the frontier of refugee employment research, Betina is turning her attention to what she describes as a bigger beast: the role of the business sector in social cohesion itself. “My research interests have evolved,” she says. “While many researchers are now focused on refugee inclusion, one of the broader challenges that has captured my attention is the decline in social cohesion globally. I am passionate about exploring how we can bridge divides, reduce polarisation, and encourage meaningful conversations between people who may see the world differently.” For organisations willing to ask that same question, the University of Sydney Business School is ready to be their partner.
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