Leadership Discourse Positions on an Inclusive University

Abstract

The academy is currently marked by a clear international market orientation with new challenges at different levels. Among these is how to advance in diversity and inclusion following the instances of international organizations such as the 2030 Agenda from Europe. This is qualitative research from the constructivist perspective of Grounded Theory. The research instrument was a semi-structured interview with 62 university leaders from the autonomous community of Andalusia (Spain). The results provide a situational positional map that advances in the analysis of the theoretical model of diversity agendas formed by the three discursive lines of naturalization, difference, and inequality (García-Cano et al., 2021). To this purpose, the conception of the university from a managerialist stance and the proposals expressed by university leaders to advance inclusion in a range from an absence of proposals to a more proactive discourse have been put in relation to each other. This positional situational map illustrates that a managerialist approach in the discourse of leaders for the university's inclusive policies implies an absence of proposals for the institutionalisation of attention to diversity and inclusion in the university from a social justice perspective.