Sport Diversity!

[bicesterox]

Just seen an article on BBC Sports website about football falling behind its targets re: appointing coaches etc of black, Asian, or mixed heritage.

Surely, you pick the best man or woman for the job, you don't think, for example, I can't appoint candidate A because although both him/her and candidate B are better qualified than candidate C, I need to be diverse so C gets the job.

Also if no black, Asian, or mixed applicants for a post how can you appoint them.

I heard a while ago of a rule that you had to at least interview a "minority" for each post, again if they don't apply how can you?

All for equality but targets are not realistic surely

 

[chuckbert]

It’s a complex one! People often say “you should recruit on merit” but it turns out we’re not very good at (a) working out what merit is and (b) unbiased identification of merit in individuals.

If you want to go by basic excellent football skills, that might be considered similar to how orchestras hire musicians. For a while now, orchestras do blind auditions where the performer is behind a screen, and it has transformed the gender balance of orchestras. That suggests that previously, people who thought they were hiring based on merit were actually hiring at least partly based on gender. (I know gender is not a factor here, but the same principles apply).

With the point about “you can’t hire who doesn’t apply”, it turns out that underrepresented groups will be even more underrepresented in recruitment pools. Using a different sector , and gender as an example again, when universities try to recruit high flying academics in science and engineering, if they advertise a female-only position they get a larger number of better female applicants than would apply for the job if it was not gendered. The time where this is not the case is in departments with higher proportion of women already.

So, if you want to tap into the potential of minorities that sum up to say 30% of the population (because there is no fundamental reason why the next messi could not be of south Asian origin ethnic origin) you have to do something different to business as usual.

The challenge is to work out what is optimal and fair.

 

[bashamwonderland]

Just seen an article on BBC Sports website about football falling behind its targets re: appointing coaches etc of black, Asian, or mixed heritage.

Surely, you pick the best man or woman for the job, you don't think, for example, I can't appoint candidate A because although both him/her and candidate B are better qualified than candidate C, I need to be diverse so C gets the job.

Also if no black, Asian, or mixed applicants for a post how can you appoint them.

I heard a while ago of a rule that you had to at least interview a "minority" for each post, again if they don't apply how can you?

All for equality but targets are not realistic surely

Measures to promote equality of opportunity
Measures to enforce equality of outcome

 

[Left Wing Cross]

Just seen an article on BBC Sports website about football falling behind its targets re: appointing coaches etc of black, Asian, or mixed heritage.

Surely, you pick the best man or woman for the job, you don't think, for example, I can't appoint candidate A because although both him/her and candidate B are better qualified than candidate C, I need to be diverse so C gets the job.

Also if no black, Asian, or mixed applicants for a post how can you appoint them.

I heard a while ago of a rule that you had to at least interview a "minority" for each post, again if they don't apply how can you?

All for equality but targets are not realistic surely

These are targets and not enforcements otherwise clubs would receive fines/punishments for failing to reach these targets.

Clubs are still in total control of their recruitment policy.

All this does is hold up a mirror to the current diversity position within coaching.