Guest editorial
Article Type: Guest editorial From: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, Volume 35, Issue 1.
Diversity, diversity management and identity in organizations
In view of the ever-shifting composition of workforces across the world and the traveling of diversity management discourses and practices, there is a need to describe and analyze the development of local diversity management practices and their consequences. The historical and socio-political context of organizations embeds a particular local flavor to diversity management that diverges from the prevalent orthodoxies of universal diversity management. Different actors and groups may be able to use the concept of diversity management strategically to negotiate improvements in status, position or voice in organizations.
This now requires us to also engage in an ongoing critical examination of the concepts of diversity and identity. With this aim in mind, we organized a stream with the title “Diversity, Diversity Management and Identity in Organizations” at the European Group of Organizations Studies (EGOS) conference in Montreal 2013. We received around 40 paper proposals from all over the world of which we selected the 24 best proposals to be presented and discussed. The deep and intense discussions at the conference,taught us that we wanted a larger audience to profit from the insights and knowledge that were derived.
We decided for an open call for papers in this journal, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, to allow both the presenters at the conference and other scholars to submit their work. In our call for papers for the special issue we therefore invited texts that discussed in which way the concept of diversity is related to identity markers like gender, race, sexuality, nationality and religion. We also wished for texts that described what diversity management means in different contexts and how it contributes to the recognition of diverse identities and the articulation of marginal voices. Finally, in our call we sought analyses of how diversity management practices address the power differentials between social identity groups.
This special issue on diversity, diversity management and identity is the product of an editing and selection process of papers that were submitted by scholars that answered to the call for papers, either as a result to their participation in the EGOS conference or independently of conference participation. We are happy that finally both empirical papers as well as literature reviews came out of this selection process that together give a broad view of local diversity practices and theoretical debates surrounding the diversity literature.
The four papers in this special issue present excellent examples of the empirical and conceptual work being undertaken in the broad field of diversity management and identity. A central theme is how demography has played a key role in prompting discussions on diversity and accelerating the need for diversity management. The two first contributions are empirically based on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, in Canada and Sweden. Both discuss the socio-cultural and social-historical context in relation to diversity management and how this also affects the practices and outcomes of diversity management. The paper by David Knights and Vedran Omanovi draws on a case study of an international manufacturing unit based in Sweden and its diversity efforts around late 1990s to early twenty-first century. The case study shows that despite good intentions, by being solely directed at gender inequality, diversity management efforts tended to obscure ethnic and age-related inequalities. The authors relate this to a problematic mainstream discourse and practice of diversity management that displaces alternative approaches; lacks in contextual sensitivity and focusses almost exclusively on performance and profitability. As this undermines diversity efforts, the authors argue that diversity is indeed being mismanaged.
In the paper by Carol-Anne Gauthier, the interconnection between employers’ practices and the political context is highlighted. The author discusses the situation of highly skilled immigrant women in Quebec and how policy makers and employers can support socio-economic integration of immigrants, in particular highly skilled women. In its efforts to integrate immigrants, Quebec has adopted a policy of interculturalism, a hybrid between multiculturalist and assimilationist approaches. The author suggests a similar approach on an organizational level, focussing on differences in ways of working but also recognizing commonalities,as a way forward for diversity management. Overall, both above contributions reinforce the contention that “context is not a ‘variable’ or ‘background’, but a complex array of power relations, discursive practices and forms of knowledge that need to be analyzed” (Ahonen et al., 2014, p. 264).
The special issue also includes two literature reviews that highlight how diversity management can gain from actual theoretical discussions. The first focusses on the concept of intersectionality. By emphasizing the intersection of power dimensions,the concept of intersectionality is key to the study of identity and diversity. In his paper, Mikkel Mouritz Marfelt identifies different tensions within the intersectionality literature and builds on this analysis to propose a methodological framework to the study of social differences. The framework Marfelt suggests takes its analytical point of departure in the empirical study of actions in order to capture how social differences emerge, change and disappear.
The second literature review deals with the relationship between the concepts of diversity and identity, and how these two bodies of literature can inform each other. Lotte Holck, Sara Louise Muhr and Florence Villesèche crafted this paper specifically for the special issue. When reviewing these two bodies of literature, they highlight how different definitions of identity influence how diversity is theorized in specific ways and how this in turn influences the analysis of diversity and the design of interventions. They also argue for theoretical coherence between definitions of identity and diversity perspectives and for increased awareness of these perspective’s advantages and disadvantages in order for diversity management research and practice to be successful.
In sum, the special issue offers important suggestions for future study of diversity and identity as well as diversity management practices. In many ways they represent the two spectrums of diversity management scholarship: an evolving critical diversity management and identity dialogue and the more conventional, managing diversity policy-driven practices of human resource management. The gap in the empirical contributions is their settings are all in the northern hemisphere.
Despite our best intentions, the issue has a northern perspective. It is in view of this that we, as editors of the special issue, ask ourselves in what way we can in a more active way promote increased diversity among contributions and invite fellow scholars from other contexts to join the scholarly conversations around diversity. We believe this is one of the key challenges for an inclusive diversity management scholarship that we must acknowledge and continue to explore in our future research(and practice!).
In terms of empirical studies of diversity management practices, there is certainly room for more research regarding other dimensions of diversity than gender and ethnicity/race such as disability, sexual orientation and religion. Here we nevertheless have to recognize that the lack of empirical studies stems not from the lack of interested scholars but mainly from the lack of actual work for change directed toward other dimensions of diversity.
The contributions also remind us that there is indeed much important knowledge generated by diversity scholars, in particular with critical and post-structuralist approach, that is not incorporated in more mainstream diversity management discourse or practice. This is most unfortunate since it is this kind of knowledge that can help avoid diversity mismanagement. This,however, requires scholars to further engage with practice.
Given the fact that Equality, Diversity and Inclusion attracts a wide readership, we hope that this special issue will inspire not only further to dialogue but also collaboration between scholars and practitioners in the promotion of equality and diversity in organizations.
Dr Inge Bleijenbergh
Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Dr Charlotte Holgersson
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Dr Irene Ryan
AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand
Reference
Ahonen, P., Tienari, J., Meriläinen, S. and Pullen, A. (2014), “Hidden contexts and invisible power relations: a Foucauldian reading of diversity research”, Human Relations, Vol. 67 No. 3, pp. 263-286
