Gender in Management: An International Journal

Critical perspectives in diversity and equality management

Beverly D. Metcalfe Carol Woodhams

Article information:

Downloaded by SEGi University & Colleges At 22:52 21 September 2016 (PT)

To cite this document:

Beverly D. Metcalfe Carol Woodhams, (2008),"Critical perspectives in diversity and equality management",
Gender in Management: An International Journal, Vol. 23 Iss 6 pp. 377 - 381
Permanent link to this document:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17542410810897508
Downloaded on: 21 September 2016, At: 22:52 (PT)
References: this document contains references to 13 other documents.
To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com
The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 4087 times since 2008*

Users who downloaded this article also downloaded:

(2012),"Equality and diversity in employment relations: do we practise what we preach?",
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, Vol. 31 Iss 4 pp. 323-339 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1108/02610151211223021
(2011),"Equality, diversity and corporate responsibility: Sexual orientation and diversity management in the
UK private sector", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, Vol. 30 Iss 8 pp. 719-734
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02610151111183225
(2009),"Equality, equal opportunities and diversity: Obfuscation as social justice", Equal Opportunities
International, Vol. 28 Iss 4 pp. 289-303 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02610150910954764

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:540740 []

For Authors
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for
Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines
are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.

About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com

Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company
manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as
providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.
Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee
on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive
preservation.

Downloaded by SEGi University & Colleges At 22:52 21 September 2016 (PT)

*Related content and download information correct at time of download.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1754-2413.htm

GUEST EDITORIAL

Guest editorial

Critical perspectives in diversity

and equality management
Beverly D. Metcalfe

377

Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK, and

Carol Woodhams
Downloaded by SEGi University & Colleges At 22:52 21 September 2016 (PT)

Plymouth Business School, Plymouth, UK

Abstract
Purpose This paper aims to draw conceptual links between the papers in this special issue, arguing
that diversity and equality research is located within varying socio-political, socio-demographic and
geo-political contexts and should therefore be seen as fluid and subject to ongoing reformation.
Design/methodology/approach This paper provides a thematic and analytical review of six
papers from the Gender, Diversity and Management track of the European Academy of Management
Conference, held at HEC, Paris in May 2007.
Findings The paper draws out themes that transcend organisation and nation boundaries, showing
how socio-cultural and political location has an important bearing on gender and diversity work
identities, constructions and ultimately, organisation development priorities.
Practical implications The paper seeks to encapsulate contemporary thinking in the discipline of
equality and diversity management with specific focus on its interaction with the externalities of
region, power, politics and society.
Originality/value The paper contributes to the developing discourse of employment-based
diversity research in the international arena. It highlights the limitations of a fixed perspective of
identity and difference, stressing the need to account for positionality in scholarly research.
Keywords Gender, Equal opportunities, Employment
Paper type General review

The economics and politics of organization development, and the implications for
management development systems and structures are important features that need to be
critically evaluated as Europe moves towards greater democratization, liberalization and
integration with global economies. Diversity initiatives are particularly relevant to an
understanding of European management initiatives on account of the new enlarged
Europe and Europes relationships and economic networks with the international
economy. Within this enlargement debate, there is also a need to consider how the myriad
of European feminism(s) and policy development initiatives in equality debates are
translated and communicated within and across organizations and the global community.
This special issue has been developed from the Gender, Diversity and Management
track of the European Academy of Management Conference that was held in Paris at HEC
in 2007. These papers were selected because they encapsulated the ethos of the conference
and highlighted some of the key issues in the understanding of diversity and the
implications for organisations in developing and implementing diversity initiatives. In
particular, the papers selected offered new insights into the way gender and organization
theory is imagined and constructed; introduced new methodological approaches to

Gender in Management: An
International Journal
Vol. 23 No. 6, 2008
pp. 377-381
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1754-2413
DOI 10.1108/17542410810897508

GM
23,6

Downloaded by SEGi University & Colleges At 22:52 21 September 2016 (PT)

378

researching gender and organizations, as well as examine the cultural specifities of doing
gender and doing diversity in different socio-cultural and geopolitical contexts, including
Denmark, Portugal and China.
Gender, and gendered and racialized power relations are defining characteristics of
most organization relationships and management practices. Diversity and difference
however, is culturally, socially and historically formed and reformed and needs to be
explored within specific socio-political and geographic regions. Diversity management
emerged as a research area in the 1990s following organizational practitioners growing
need to manage cross-cultural and individual differences in an increasingly diverse
demographic workforce (Nkomo and Cox, 1996; Walby, 2007). These managerial origins
are rooted in feminist theory and critical race studies and have influenced the first
generation of diversity scholars (Davis et al., 2006). Diversity commentators sought to
unravel the socio-demographic, socio-cultural and geopolitical contexts of work and
organization processes, or examine discriminatory practices such as wage differentials,
occupational segregation and more subtle exclusionary practices such as the prevalence of
gendered organizational cultures and the pre-eminence of hegemonic masculinity in many
organization practices. Further, organizational diversity critiques paid attention to
unveiling how organization demographics such as race, ethnicity or gender have tended to
be glossed over in critical debates, and in particular categories of difference were viewed as
fixed or stable and blurred within group differences.
New developments in diversity theorizing stressed the value of the heterogeneity of
group differences and challenged the view that difference was essentialist (Ely and
Thomas, 2001). Diversity management focuses on a strategy corrected approach which
recognizes worker individuality and believes in the benefits of diversity to
organizations. It is not intended to guarantee the integration of minorities in a
dominant culture, but to challenge managerial practices so that everyone can succeed
by being true to him/herself. Under the diversity framework, the equality based on
sameness is the equality based on difference (Liff, 1999; Walby, 2007).
A great deal of US-based studies have largely been instrumentally driven and
primarily focused on advocating the business case for diversity. There have also been
frameworks designed to reveal how diversity is broadly managed ranging from
resistance, discrimination and fairness, access and legitimacy and learning and
effectiveness. In line with business case models, the more advanced approaches tend to
treat employees as strategic assets in organizations as well as aligning diversity values
with the organizations mission and business strategy (Ely and Thomas, 2001).
Influenced by gender mainstreaming philosophies in EU institution and United Nations
policy making and increased migration of immigrants across European borders European
scholars however, have begun to question these business case strategies and approaches,
particularly the assumptions about the nature of diversity and how diversity should be
managed, and the performance paradigm that is universally capitalised upon
(Walby, 2007). Within organisation studies especially, particular attention has sought to
show how socio-demographic categories under investigation, such as race, ethnicity or
gender represent a fixed essence. Relatedly, this perspective in marginalising differences of
specific categories, such as women, pay little attention to individual or within group
variation. Increasingly, scholars stress the fluidity of diverse identities in organizations
and of the importance of social and organizational contexts and how they shape the
dynamics of managing of diversity. Dominant discourses in specific socio-political and

Downloaded by SEGi University & Colleges At 22:52 21 September 2016 (PT)

geographic regions are also noted as influencing the formation of diversity themes
and meanings.
Advancing debates from the EURAM 2006 special edition European perspectives
on diversity management (Metcalfe and Fielden, 2007), the papers in this special issue
encapsulate the need to unravel diversity organization demographics in more critical
ways. Following critical scholars concerns to question and challenge dominant gender
and diversity theorising we want to argue that while diversity can incorporate within
group characteristics, associated with groups such as gender, race, sexuality and class,
diversity also needs to be examined within existing intersecting power structures and
relations, and in different social constructions of diversity values and priorities.
The implication of this analysis is that diversity and equality research will be highly
variable and subject to ongoing reformation (Nkomo and Cox, 1996).
Bendl, Fleischmann and Walentas paper provides an innovative critique of diversity
management through the lens of queer theory. In so doing, they untangle the binary
representation of male and female identities and offer new possibilities for re-imaging
diversity management programs and strategies. Drawing on Butlers notion of
performativity associated with the stylized repetition of acts, they avert the value of
exploring the formation of agency positions through discursive positioning. This is a
movement forward as in essence they want to interrogate the reproduction of binary
modalities based on herernormativity. In disentangling these social and sexual structures
of diversity management, they show queer perspectives, an alternative discourse, allow
organization relations to be a becoming process not a being one. To show this
becoming and transition moment they use Loden and Rosen frames of capturing
marginal identity positions. This four-layer model captures the multi-dimensional and
intersecting dynamics of identity position, yet it also makes the diversity label seemingly
nameless and empty. Applying a queer perspective begins to mark and name categories of
difference that has tended to be blurred by a dominant all embracing diversity discourse is
one way of opening up possibilities and naming difference.
The second paper by Lamsa and Hiillos explores womens career counseling of
22 women who had completed an MBA using an innovative autobiographical approach.
Challenging the notion that traditional career trajectories are based on male working
norms they argue an autobiographical approach as a mode of inquiry empowers women
to narrate meaningful career stories. Adopting a social constructionist perspective that
examined how career counseling as autobiography can help draw out significant themes
in womens careers in so that they capture career narrative and action. A key advantage
of this mode is that it moves from being a static to dynamic process of research collection.
This is shown by the way in which participants are playing three roles as the main
manager character, story teller, and reflector of her biography. The approach allows us
to capture the subtleties and nuances of mid life career experiences and work-family
conflicts and moves away from.
In the third paper, the authors Xian and Woodhams also examine career concept in
more critical terms. Generally, there are a growing number of scholars opposing
universalistic explanation has been emerging within theoretical explanations of career.
For many years now, authors have developed alternative explanations of womens career
(Astin, 1984; Larwood and Gutek, 1987) but these may be insufficiently nuanced to shed
light on the socio-cultural context of Chinese women that have achieved career success.
The article from Xian and Woodhams seeks to explore how far Western theories may be

Guest editorial

379

GM
23,6

Downloaded by SEGi University & Colleges At 22:52 21 September 2016 (PT)

380

suitable for guiding research in a non-Western context by using theories of career

management to study womens career experiences in the Chinese information technology
industry. The issue was investigated during a small scale in-depth interview programme
using personal narrative data. Findings suggest that Chinese women struggle to come to
terms with their success within a socially-bound value system that serves to oppress the
career activity of women, whilst also dealing with potential conflict within their own
internal culturally-bound values. On the basis of this finding, the authors argue that
factors relating to the Chinese context and particularly socially held values are not always
sufficiently accounted for in Western theories of womens career development.
In the fourth paper, Risberg and S?derberg study how the concept of diversity is
translated and adapted in the Danish social context. Analyzing 100 Danish organizations
via survey they then conduct interviews as well provide a discourse analysis of diversity
statements and policies on the web sites so as to uncover the way in which diversity is
socially constituted in Denmark. They show that diversity has evolved in quite different
ways to the dominant US and UK brand of diversity literature. In the interviews with HR
managers overall they found that diversity was largely used as a rhetorical device and
constituted as part of HR strategizing as away of promoting social and ethical
responsibility. In contrast to the UK and USA, the terminology diversity is associated with
the social category ethnicity and to lesser extent religion and gender. They argue that this
reflects the migration labour movements in Denmark and that there is a steady influx of
European nationalities. Significantly diversity was conceptualized as a potential assett
for the companies to improve competitive advantage.
The fifth paper is from Santos and Cabral-Cardosa which examines the processes of
work-life balance and conflict in academic institutions and their gendered effects in
Portugal. The increasing economic and managerial ethos which surrounds university
life is prevalent across all European countries, so much so that they have become
greedy institutions. This has led to work intensification, and has had profound
gendered impacts in terms of work family conflict since institutions have established
career programs premised on mens development and those are very much normalized in
the everyday work and organizational practices of universities.
Santos and Cabral-Cardosa stress that much literature on work life conflict has
examined the limitations of family-friendly policies, and of organization support
systems to assist families in respect of flexi time. Overall, they argue both men and
women report similar levels of work interference with family and family interference
from work. In a Portuguese context however work conflict regimes are more complex.
Identity, organizations, transformations
The papers in this special issue have a uniting theme that transcends organization
and nation boundaries, that is, one of understanding the socially located identity and
subject positions of men and women doing diversity. In respect of gender and
diversity, theorising capacities for reflecting on workplace injustices cannot be easily
achieved through a binary logic and require intersecting differences to be articulated.
As Adkins (2002, p. 26) has argued:
The politics of identity are not only at the heart of workplace politics but also of the labour
process and the organization of production.. The significance of issues of identity at work
mean that a politics of deconstruction (for example of the hetero/homo binary) is now best
suited to the task of addressing workplace struggles.

Downloaded by SEGi University & Colleges At 22:52 21 September 2016 (PT)

This is especially true in terms of Bendl et als arguments for injecting a queer lens into
organization and management theorising.
In respect of identity politics and place, commentators in this special issue have
shown that exploring career histories and narratives of women and men in a particular
socio-cultural and political location has an important bearing on gender and diversity
work identities, constructions, an ultimately in organization development priorities. The
case of Portugal and Denmark provide empirical evidence which shows how diversity
theorising is a fluid and contested context, and shaped by intersecting power relations
and organization processes, including individual identity position, organization cultural
practices and the dynamics of diversity salient theme in particular countries. We would
argue that positioning debates about diversity and difference and the politics of place
and location are areas that need to taken up by gender and diversity scholars globally.
References
Adkins, L. (2002), Revision: Gender and Sexuality in Late Modernity, Open University Press,
Buckingham.
Astin, H.S. (1984), The meaning of work in womens lives: a socio-psychological model of
career choice and work behaviour, Counselling Psychologist, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 117-26.
Davis, K., Evans, M. and Lorber, J. (2006), Handbook of Womens and Gender Studies, Sage, London.
Ely, R.J. and Thomas, D.A. (2001), Cultural diversity at work, Administrative Science Quarterly,
Vol. 46 No. 2, pp. 229-73.
Larwood, L. and Gutek, B.A. (1987), Working towards a theory of womens career development,
in Gutek, B.A. and Larwood, L. (Eds), Womens Career Development, Sage, Newbury Park,
CA, pp. 170-83.
Liff, S. (1999), Diversity and equal opportunities: room for a compromise?, Human Resource
Management Journal, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 65-75.
Metcalfe, B.D. and Fielden, S. (2007), European perspectives on diversity management
(editorial), Women in Management Review, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 249-53.
Nkomo, S. and Cox, T. (1996), Diverse identities in organizations, in Clegg, S.R., Hardy, C. and
Nord, W.R. (Eds), Handbook of Organization Studies, Sage, London.
Walby, S. (2007), Gender (In)Equality and the Future of Work, Equal Opportunities Commission,
Manchester.
Further reading
Cox, T.H. and Blake, S. (1991), Managing cultural diversity: implications for organizational
competitiveness, Academy of Management Executive, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 45-56.
Ibarra, H. (1995), Race, opportunity and social circles in managerial networks, Academy of
Management Journal, Vol. 38 No. 3, pp. 673-703.
Janssens, M. and Zanoni, P. (2005), Many diversities for many services: theorising diversity
(management) in service companies, Human Relations, Vol. 58 No. 3, pp. 311-41.
Marginson, S. (2000), Rethinking academic work in the global arena, Journal of Higher
Education Policy and Management, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 23-35.
Corresponding author
Beverly D. Metcalfe can be contacted at: metcalb@hope.ac.uk; metcafebd@yahoo.co.uk
To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: reprints@emeraldinsight.com
Or visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints

Guest editorial

381

Downloaded by SEGi University & Colleges At 22:52 21 September 2016 (PT)

This article has been cited by:

1. Yehuda Baruch Southampton Business School, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK Anne
Laure Humbert Cranfield School of Management, Bedford, UK Doirean Wilson Middlesex University
Business School, Middlesex University, London, UK . 2016. The moderating effects of single vs multiplegrounds of perceived-discrimination on work-attitudes. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International
Journal 35:3, 232-249. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
2. Professor Torkild Thanem and Professor Alison Pullen Peter Bloom Department of People and
Organizations, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK . 2014. We are all monsters now!. Equality, Diversity
and Inclusion: An International Journal 33:7, 662-680. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
3. Difference and social identity 3-24. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] [PDF]
4. References 219-267. [Citation] [Enhanced Abstract] [PDF] [PDF]
5. Sine N. Just, Tanja J. Christiansen. 2012. Doing Diversity: Text-Audience Agency and Rhetorical
Alternatives. Communication Theory 22:3, 319-337. [CrossRef]
6. Ahu Tatli, Mustafa F. zbilgin. 2012. An Emic Approach to Intersectional Study of Diversity at Work:
A Bourdieuan Framing. International Journal of Management Reviews 14:2, 180-200. [CrossRef]
7. Beverly Dawn Metcalfe, Carol Woodhams. 2012. Introduction: New Directions in Gender, Diversity and
Organization Theorizing - Re-imagining Feminist Post-colonialism, Transnationalism and Geographies
of Power. International Journal of Management Reviews 14:2, 123-140. [CrossRef]
8. Iris Rittenhofer, Caroline Gatrell. 2012. Gender Mainstreaming and Employment in the European Union:
A Review and Analysis of Theoretical and Policy Literatures*. International Journal of Management
Reviews 14:2, 201-216. [CrossRef]
9. Tanja Juul Christiansen, Sine Nrholm Just. 2012. Regularities of diversity discourse: Address,
categorization, and invitation. Journal of Management & Organization 18:3, 398-411. [CrossRef]
10. Tanja Juul Christiansen, Sine Nrholm Just. 2012. Regularities of diversity discourse: Address,
categorization, and invitation. Journal of Management & Organization 18:03, 398-411. [CrossRef]
11. Ebrahim Soltani, Jawad Syed, Ying-Ying Liao, Nasrollah Shahi-Sough. 2012. Tackling one-sidedness in
equality and diversity research: Characteristics of the current dominant approach to managing diverse
workgroups in Iran. Asia Pacific Journal of Management 29:1, 9-37. [CrossRef]
12. Vanmala Hiranandani. 2012. Diversity Management in the Canadian Workplace: Towards an Antiracism
Approach. Urban Studies Research 2012, 1-13. [CrossRef]
13. Luisa De VitaDepartment DIeS, Faculty of Sociology, University of Rome Sapienza, Rome, Italy. 2010.
The diversity management approach: new implications for gender policies in Italy. Equality, Diversity and
Inclusion: An International Journal 29:8, 724-742. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
14. Marta B. Cals, Charlotte Holgersson, Linda Smircich. 2009. Diversity Management? Translation?
Travel?. Scandinavian Journal of Management 25:4, 349-351. [CrossRef]