Diversity and Identity in the Workplace by Florence Villesèche Sara Louise Muhr & Lotte Holck

Author:Florence Villesèche, Sara Louise Muhr & Lotte Holck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Moving Critique to the Field

Despite the scathing criticism of diversity management, only a handful of empirical studies have traced the effects of specific diversity-related measures (e.g. diversity staff positions, mentoring programmes and diversity training) on the inclusion and promotion of historically disadvantaged groups (Benschop et al. 2015; Boogaard and Roggeband 2010; Dobbin and Kalev 2016; Janssens and Zanoni 2014). Even fewer critical diversity scholars have engaged with practitioners to help to develop workable tools for HR practice or to provide other types of practical solutions to the progressive changes that the critical perspective otherwise expounds (for exceptions, see Akom 2011; Ghorashi and Ponzoni 2014; Ghorashi and Sabelis 2013; Janssens and Zanoni 2014; Ortlieb and Sieben 2014; Staunæs and Søndergaard 2008).

The criticism raised towards critical diversity scholars is that they do not step far beyond mere critique but mainly operate in a theoretical sphere, where ideologies and false consciousness are uncovered through deconstructing these discourses (Ghorashi and Sabelis 2013; Holck et al. 2016; Ortlieb and Sieben 2014; Schwabenland and Tomlinson 2015; Zanoni and Janssens 2007; Zanoni et al. 2017). This might partly explain the obstacles that critical diversity researchers experience when relating their theories to practice. Accordingly, it has been suggested that critical diversity research should apply a “more proactive, performative perspective that is not afraid to consider alternative approaches and solutions to the practice of diversity management” (Schwabenland and Tomlinson 2015, p. 3), in order to achieve greater insight into “how organizations can achieve greater equality despite their capitalist nature” (Janssens and Zanoni 2014, p. 311). Diversity scholars and practitioners alike underline the necessity to gain more insights into diversity practices and activities, as well as how to change these, as “our current knowledge of how organizations can actually achieve power equality remains poor” (Janssens and Zanoni 2014, p. 317; see also Ahmed 2007; Zanoni et al. 2010). Accordingly, a growing number of critical diversity scholars have themselves emphasized the need for more critically informed research into the practices of diversity and inclusion (Benschop et al. 2015; Holck et al. 2016; Schwabenland and Tomlinson 2015; Zanoni et al. 2017). There has also been a call for organization-level analysis and practical, relevant critical diversity studies (Boogaard and Roggeband 2010; Dobbin and Kalev 2016; Ghorashi and Sabelis 2013; Zanoni et al. 2010; Zanoni and Janssens 2015). Hence, diversity in organizations is in need of revitalization, both theoretically and methodologically.

One of the barriers to critically engaged scholarship is the tendency to consider power as located primarily outside of individual reach: in structures, contexts or discourses. Hereby, another kind of ‘fixing’ of the subjects’ positions is produced. Excessive (structural) determinism, and/or the vision that specific groups (managers and majority employees) hold power, underplays (the perceived dominated) individual agency. For example, critical research, with its emancipatory aims, has tended to reify managers as being powerful and other employees as powerless or to assume that bureaucracy is necessarily detrimental to the objective of developing egalitarian, inclusive and democratic organizations and that power is necessarily repressive. Such

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