Diversifying the workplace in nonprofit organizations: Discourses and perspectives on ethnic diversity

Abstract

This study analyses the perspectives of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) on workplace diversity. Organizational diversity is a well‐established research topic in both profit management and organization studies, as well as in nonprofit scholarship. However, diversity is often discussed from a managerial point of view and, particularly in nonprofits, with little attention to workplace diversity. Using interview data from 25 Belgian NPOs, we explore how leaders in different types of nonprofits approach workplace diversity, discursively and in their organizational practices. Our analysis is centered around Maier and Meyer's typology on nonprofit governance and aims to understand how workplace diversity is perceived in organizations with a domestic, professionalist, grassroots, and civic discourse. We outline the main diversity perspectives underlying these governance discourses. Our study reveals that the way NPO leaders approach workplace diversity is shaped by their overall governance, resulting in differing discourses that go beyond business or social justice rationales. We conclude that there are various ways in which NPOs differentiate diversity, making it important not only to go beyond a managerial/business and social justice discourse, but also to unpack the different forms in which civic or grassroots discourses for example manifest themselves in the nonprofit sector.