Abstract
The growing heterogeneity of workplaces in the last few decades has turned the interest in workplace diversity into the bon-ton of many managers and organizational researchers. Recent social changes, including globalization, the growing number of multinational corporations, and the mass migration of waves of job-seekers and war refugees from developing countries to Europe and the United States (Appadurai, 1996), have accelerated the awareness of difference and prompted many HR mangers to seek ways to “manage” diversity—that is, not only to see diversity as something that has to be “dealt with” or “coped with,” but also to use it as a managerial tool for increasing production and creativity in work teams. Much of this literature has been led by American researchers who have sought to advance a reactive approach against discrimination and prejudice; only in the 1990s did critical researchers, inspired mostly by feminist, post-colonial, and/or post-structural theories, begin to seriously challenge this approach by exploring power relations related to diversity both in local and global contexts. The melting-pot approach, which encouraged assimilation into the hegemonic culture and which was the most accepted approach in organizations and in research, is now being increasingly replaced by a celebration of pluralism that does not necessitate putting aside one’s cultural ideologies and lifestyle. In this respect, the editors of The Oxford Handbook of Diversity in Organizations—Regine Bendl, Inge Bleijenbergh, Elina Henttonen, and Albert Mills—make a substantial contribution to these attempts to promote a pluralistic and critical understanding of diversity in the workplace.
The Handbook is an extensive and impressive project that comprises 28 chapters by very well-known, highly regarded authors in the field of diversity. Though it would have been much easier for the editors to present only studies employing a critical approach, with the aim of promoting this relatively neglected perspective (as compared to the popular and widespread American approach, which emphasizes diversity management), they have made a much-appreciated effort to integrate some positivistic and American-inspired chapters. While I personally feel more sympathetic to the critical perspective, I think that by integrating these positivist chapters the editors have gained at least two advantages: first, they have succeeded in avoiding the common confrontational discourse between critical and positivist traditions; second, they have done an excellent job in echoing the subject of diversity in their handbook by giving voice to varied theoretical perspectives and have thereby managed to embrace diversity as an ideology-in-practice—that is, not only “saying” and “telling about” diversity, but also actually “doing” diversity.
To achieve this goal, the editors have included in their collection works by authors from around the globe (including, to name a few, Brazil, South Africa, India, and Pakistan) and introduced many of the most-studied issues in the field (gender, race, ethnicity, age, disabilities, cultural differences, and so on), thereby reflecting the plethora of topics in the theoretical field of diversity research. Even though an edited collection offers a comfortable platform for voicing the different perspectives of authors from diverse cultural contexts, it is nonetheless a challenging mission that should not be taken for granted. In the introductory chapter, the editors state: “We aim to present what are the shared foundations of organizing, managing and studying diversities, but instead of trying to find one common lexicon for talking about diversity in organizations we have made our duty in this book to embrace the diversity in the diversity scholarship” (p. 2). I truly believe that this is the best way to write about diversity.
A second feature that characterizes the Handbook is its theoretical, rather than empirical, emphasis. Since Bendl and her colleagues hoped to expose their readers to the widest possible scope of theoretical approaches in regard to diversity, they made a great effort to present a variety of theories that elaborate the most-often examined topics in diversity studies.
Yet despite this informative overview, which should prove a valuable source for researchers and students seeking entry into the complex world of diversity studies, the Handbook falls somewhat short in its attempt to provide its readers with more thought-provoking, cross-cultural evidence. Diversity studies are grounded in unique case studies and the experiences of marginalized groups from heterogeneous geo-political contexts. These allow us to broaden (and at times to challenge) our underlying and often unnoticed cultural assumptions, and to examine the ways in which these often-unchallenged Euro- or Anglo-centric assumptions affect both the organizations that we study and our own understanding of them. As diversity scholars who study peripheral social groups, we are often asked the question, “So what?” But unique—even extreme—case studies offer a leeway for the development of new theories that can, in turn, illuminate processes and practices that also exist in more common, mainstream cases. Therefore, the editors’ choice to focus on theory on the one hand enables us to draw a clear picture of the existing theoretical frameworks but, on the other, prevents us from deepening our understanding of other cultural contexts. Naturally, in the abundant field of diversity studies, such an editorial decision is inevitable and completely understandable.
The Handbook, which is divided into six parts, aims to represent diversified theories, epistemologies, empirical methods, contexts, and practices, as well as the intersections of diversity and future theoretical challenges of the field. Even though this division is not always clear, I tend to believe that it was a part of a general attempt (perhaps not completely intentional), to challenge the “ordered” knowledge and information accumulated hitherto, especially in positivist research. This is clearly reflected both in the introductory chapter and in Part 1, where the editors avoid providing the reader with an overview of the field, as is common in similar handbooks, and instead choose to hand over this mission to other distinguished researchers in the field, each of whom summarizes and analyzes the research in the field from their own point of view. Despite the risk of ambiguity, especially for those readers who are new to the field, it allows each reader to find interest in different chapters. I personally found Chapter 2 (by Judith Pringle and Glenda Strachan), Chapter 3 (by Jeff Hearn and Jonna Louvrier), and Chapter 4 (by David Knights and Vedran Omanović) most intriguing because they provide a comprehensive and balanced historical overview of the changes and the main theoretical emphases in the field. At the same time, they suggest original ideas for future research in this area.
Part 2 is devoted to the presentation of a few leading epistemologies in critical diversity studies, including post-colonial, queer, and positivist theory. Some of the chapters in this part offer a comprehensive overview of the epistemology they focus on and provide the reader with a solid understanding of the history and emphases of this epistemology. Part 3 of the Handbook concentrates on methodologies—quantitative and qualitative—and includes, inter alia, chapters on ethnography and reflexivity. Part 4 offers data and a few case studies from international contexts, such as India and Pakistan, which are not often found in mainstream research. Part 5 is dedicated to the growing interest in intersectionality (Brah & Phoenix, 2013; Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013; Holvino, 2010) and is the only part of the book in which several diversities are simultaneously discussed. This section includes the most prominent identity categorizations explored in diversity studies: gender, ethnicity, race, class, disabilities, age, masculinity, and religion. Like the opening part of the Handbook—in which the editors’ effort to advance a pluralistic approach is manifested through a variety of introductory chapters—Part 6, the final section, foregoes a concluding chapter. Instead it includes three chapters: one focused on how to research diversity (written by Inge Bleijenbergh, one of the book’s editors, and Sandra Fielden); a second chapter on how to “do” diversity (by Yvonne Benschop and colleagues); and a third and final chapter centered on how to diffuse diversity by adopting a provincializing approach to diversity and intersectionality (by Banu Özkazanç-Pan and Marta Calás). All these chapters call for the expansion of research into non-Western organizations and identities and their interrelations with Western contexts.
Despite the book’s wide-ranging scope, there remain some very important theoretical directions that are overlooked or only scantly mentioned, such as various forms of masculinity, whiteness, and its governance in various organizational and geo-political contexts, resistance and counter-interpretations to hegemonic discourses on diversity, symbolic, aesthetic, and spatial manifestations of exclusion, policy making dilemmas, and their role in social change and more. I would like to have seen a more systematic discussion on religion in organizations, which, in my opinion, should be seen as one of the most crucial aspects of contemporary organizations (Tracey, 2012). Indeed, Chapter 24 refers to the subject by describing the roots of anti-Muslim prejudice in the US and by focusing on discrimination on the basis of race. However, in light of the growing power of fundamentalist groups in Western countries and the often inevitable clash of civilizations, religious faiths within the workplace have a profound role whose examination should not have been restricted to a single chapter, despite that chapter’s high quality.
The integration of groups from non-democratic traditions and from societies with rigid gender hierarchies forces us, researchers from privileged Western cultures, to challenge our basic assumptions about power relations, resistance, and agency. That is, when we, as diversity scholars, talk about “inclusion” and “valuing diversity,” we assume that our ideologies and values are not threatened or put into question by other groups and that tolerance and open-mindedness are not only right and just, but also mutual. This is not always the case, however. While much of the writing hitherto has been more reflective in nature and concentrates on hegemony and its exclusion, discrimination, and “othering” practices, it assumes asymmetric power relations and the superiority of Western democratic agendas. This position allegedly enables us to act from a strong hegemonic standpoint and to choose the most efficient inclusion practices (from a positivist perspective) or to accept and give voice to other cultural groups (from a critical perspective). But both approaches assume uneven, paternalist power relations between Western and non-Western societies. Recent events have challenged these assumptions, and the distinction between “weak” and “strong” is blurred and constantly in flux. These changes raise new questions that we, as researchers from a Western democratic society, must address: Can we put aside our own paternalist positioning to investigate these changing power relations? Should we adjust our own ideological boundaries to encompass values that we find unjust? How should we approach and study what we perceive as oppressive, chauvinist, or violent regimes? These and other questions of this nature are the most burning issues that diversity studies must face in a much more thorough manner.
Despite these shortcomings, this is a worthwhile handbook for diversity researchers and students, and it unquestionably should be placed on our office shelves to be used regularly. It is rooted in a well-established field, and it succeeds in avoiding a superficial, one-dimensional view while providing an extensive overview of both micro and macro perspectives on diversity.