Managers' practice of managing diversity revealed: A practice-theoretical account

Abstract

Despite the centrality of managing diversity effectively in contemporary organizations, existing literature gives disparate and incomplete accounts of how managers actually manage diversity in practice. The prevailing managerial literature focuses on what diversity activities should be involved in managing diversity but does not identify how managers actually undertake these activities in practice. The growing interpretive/critical literature focuses on how people's understandings define managing diversity, but is silent on how managers translate their understandings into specific diversity activities in practice. We applied a practice perspective in conjunction with phenomenography as a methodological approach to investigate how managers actually manage diversity in practice in the empirical context of professional services firms. The results show that managers' practice of managing diversity is constituted by four understandings of managing diversity that distinguish and organize diversity activities into four different and progressively more comprehensive ways of managing diversity. This practice-theoretical account transcends the existing literature's partial accounts in significant ways by offering a new and considerably broader and more precise conceptualization of managers' practice of managing diversity, including which ways of managing diversity may be more effective than others.

The moderating role of cultural intelligence in the relationship between cultural orientations and conflict management styles

“…Additionally, individuals come to the organizations with different cultural orientations; this implies that managers who are leading culturally diverse teams need to be aware of their team members' cultural orientations and identity. In this respect, managers should refrain from turning a "blind eye" (O'Leary & Sandberg, 2017) to their employees' cultural differences, orientations and identities while managing conflict. Altogether managers and leaders who are leading cross-cultural teams will need to train their employees in CQ to minimize relationship challenges presented by cultural differences in organizations.…”

Phenomenography’s contribution to organizational studies based on a practice perspective

“…O'Leary and Sandberg (2016), when dealing with the daily performance of professionals at work, suggest phenomenography as an approach that facilitates the understanding of differences in particular ways individuals experience work. Thus, phenomenography enables researchers to theorize about how the phenomenon is experienced and understood by members of organizations (Lupson & Partington, 2011).…”

“…The use of phenomenography in research in the field of administration has increased (O'Leary & Sandberg, 2016). It is possible to observe, however, that the studies emphasize the approach's methodological dimension, whereas phenomenography is more than a method.…”

Sustainability performance in businesses and its implications for the sustainability service industry

“…The interview is thus an instrument to derive what has been experienced, with less interest in how experiences are linguistically constructed. Observations also form part of the methods repertoire of phenomenographers (e.g., Nichols, 2018;O'Leary & Sandberg, 2016;Sandberg, 1994;Sandberg, 2000), but it is in interviews in which research subjects express meanings in relation to their lived experiences. Interviews offer researchers the opportunity to uncover what is expressed between the lines and to allow research subjects to expand on what would otherwise remain unsaid (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015).…”