Critical Turns in the Evolution of Diversity Management

Abstract

tives into decision-making processes and helping organizations reach new, and formerly untapped, markets. But their success, as illustrated above by the Stephen Lawrence case, has been patchy. Consequently, in order to understand the reasons for its success or otherwise, the diversity management phenomenon has been the subject of considerable academic debate. This paper seeks to extend and invigorate existing critiques of the aims and claims of diversity management. Four overlapping turns -demographic, political, economic and critical -akin to the broader and critical 'turns' in the humanities and social sciences are identified. When existing critiques are reconsidered through the framework offered by these four turns, then diversity management can be seen to: perpetuate rather than combat inequalities in the workplace; diminish the legacy of discrimination against historically repressed minorities in the workplace; continue to prescribe essentialist categories of difference and present problematic dualisms for effecting organizational change.

Converging logics? Managing migration and managing diversity

“…First emerging in the USA, it is increasingly implemented in Europe, where it first entered the policy field in the late 1990s (Gordon 1995;Lorbiecki and Jack 2000;Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010;Neuhold and Scheibelhofer 2010). Single and comparative case-studies of diversity management in different national contexts show that diversity (management) takes on different meanings in relation to national migration histories and policies as well as equality legislation (Greene, Kirton and Wrench 2005;Kalonaityte 2009;Meriläinen et al 2009;Sénac and Forest 2015;cf.…”

Discursive managerial practices of diversity and homogeneity

“…Several scholars attribute this paradoxical exclusion to power. Lorbiecki and Jack (2000), for example, argued that the management of diversity discourse presents managers as 'the privileged subject who sees diversity as an object to be managed' (p. S23), creating those who manage and those who are diverse. The results of the current study substantiate this argument only in part.…”

Understanding 'Diversity in Organizations' Paradigmatically and Methodologically

“…To continue to search for new paradigmatical and methodological possibilities for understanding and studying "diversity in organizations" (initiated by Fine, 1996, Litvin, 2000, Lorbiecki and Jack, 2000and Omanovic, 2002 in the following section I will present and discuss one of these possibilities. The motives and reasons of choosing this theoretical orientation, which is, in my interpretation of Burrell and Morgan's work located in the radical humanist paradigm, are because it develops specific forms of critical thinking that is so far neglected in research on "diversity in organizations".…”

“…9 For instance, the studies of Fine (1996) and Omanovic (2002) for critical theories; the study of Litvin (2000) for designing future research on "workforce diversity" upon "organizational ethnography or one consisting of extensive and comprehensive interviews" or the study of Lorbiecki and Jack (2000) in which the authors argue to awareness of "alternative ways" of studying "diversity in organizations" that should be reflexive and historically sensitive.…”

“…For instance Fine (1996) reviewed and divided the literature on "diversity" depending on what central themes characterized those publications. In the study of Litvin (2000), the author focused on the history of scholarly publications on "workforce diversity" while in the study of Lorbiecki and Jack (2000), the authors paid their attention on turns in "diversity management" history. Finally in the study of Omanovic (2002) the author focused on the underlying assumptions on which some of the earlier published studies were based.…”