The Routledge Companion to Organizational Diversity Research Methods

Sine Nørholm Just, Annette Risberg, Florence Villesèche

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367211486
• eBook ISBN: 9780429560705
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Organizational diversity has become a topic of interest for practitioners and academics alike. This book explores how diversity in organizations is, and can be researched, providing readers with insights into the potential research designs for studies in contemporary organizations.

This includes paying attention to methods but also to the role of the researcher and research bodies in the field, their potential as activists as well as to the theoretical question of standpoints in researching organizational diversity. Chapters also consider the diversity of research participants, inclusive research, and intersectionality. All contributors are experts in diversity research, and in their contributions, they reflect upon the appropriate methods for the specific type of diversity research they conduct, noting strengths and weaknesses and illustrating their arguments with practical examples from their work.

This handbook will be of great value to academics, students, researchers, practitioners, and professionals with an interest in broadening their understanding of how to research organizational diversity in contemporary organizations or seeking to develop their awareness of diversity when researching management and organization, more generally.

1

Researching Organizational Diversity

Opportunities and Challenges

Sine Nørholm Just, Annette Risberg, and Florence Villesèche

From the 1960s onward, corporations have been concerned with addressing diversity among their employees and providing them with equal opportunities by instilling numerous programs and initiatives (Dobbin & Kalev, 2013). Alongside this practical concern, diversity also became a research topic for management and organization scholars, who gradually shifted their emphasis from affirmative action as a way to increase diversity within organizations towards managing diversity (for an early example, see Roosevelt Thomas, 1990). As organizations shifted towards a managerial approach to diversity, many research studies started to focus on explaining whether or not increased diversity in organizations enhanced organizational performance (e.g., Milliken & Martins, 1996). Yet, as this mainstream of research advanced, there emerged a more critical flow of work, one that questioned the self-evidence of conjoining diversity and management. Such a critique considers the political, cultural, and social implications of the constructed knowledge (Lorbiecki, 2001; Lorbiecki & Jack, 2000), arguing that mainstream management and organization theories are blind to issues of inequality and discrimination (Acker, 2012; Calás & Smircich, 1991; Grimes, 2002).

A now classic text by Lorbiecki and Jack (2000) identifies four different turns in the evolution of diversity management and its research. They describe the development of diversity management as first focusing on changing population demographics as a reason for increased diversity in organizations. The next turn was to view diversity management as a political interest, an alternative to affirmative action. Later diversity management was turned into an economic concern, a business case argument, with critical reflection on the merits of diversity management constituting the fourth and final turn. In a recent contribution, Nkomo, Bell, Roberts, Joshi, and Thatcher (2019) identify critical junctures in the field of diversity. In the 1960s and 1970s research focused on race and gender differences, women in management, and discrimination in general. In the 1980s and 1990s, research focused on “deep” level diversity, meaning attention was still focused on those categories of differentiation that are also basic dimensions of individual and group identity, e.g., race, gender, and age. However, emphasis is shifted from anti-discrimination to management potential and the business case along with the emergence of critical studies of diversity. Finally, in the 2000s and 2010s, the research focus turned to identity fluidity, implicit bias, and the diversity climate. For the future, Nkomo et al. predict a diversification of diversity studies insofar as new studies will include and combine macro-level phenomena like structural inequality, whiteness, and racialization with micro-level experiences of fluid identities, intersecting identities, and mobile identities so as to offer nuanced multilevel theories of diversity. They summarize their observations by saying that “the diversity trajectory has shifted over the past 50 years, from an initial anti-discrimination and equality perspective of the underrepresentation of racial minorities and women in management… to individualized experiences of belonging to multiplex, fluid categories” (Nkomo et al., 2019, p. 500). This aligns with changes in the critical diversity stream where the idea that diversity management is about fixing minoritized individuals and groups is contested (cf. Fletcher & Ely, 2003; see Risberg, Mensi-Klarbach, & Hanappi-Egger, 2019), and where it is argued that diversity management – rather than opening up opportunities – risks reproducing and perpetuating societal inequalities (Calás & Smircich, 1999; Muhr & Salem, 2013; Romani & Binswanger, 2019; Zanoni, 2011; Zanoni & Janssens, 2004).

Hence, diversity research covers a wide spectrum going from managerial approaches, where the aim is to improve organizational performance by harnessing diversity, to critical perspectives, with a focus on the adverse effects of the diversity harness that management places on diverse subjects within the organization. If we were to identify the common denominator in such a varied scholarship, we could argue that all diversity researchers are concerned with improving and refining practices of organizational diversity. Accordingly, empirically identifying and (critically) assessing diversity in organizations – and potentially suggesting better alternatives – is a common methodological ambition of researchers in the field. Diversity researchers, then, share a common goal, but have very different views as to how this goal should be defined and achieved. In short, they adopt different methodologies, implying different epistemological stances and methods.

Noting the common purpose of diversity research as well as its many different instantiations, the purpose of this volume is to provide empirically informed reflections on and suggestions for researching diversity in organizations from different methodological perspectives. Thus, we put the spotlight on a hitherto underexplored question: How can (and do) we research diversity in contemporary organizations? Each part of this volume provides stepping stones to answering this question and pays attention not only to methods but also to the role of the researcher in the field, including their potential as activists, as well as the broader theoretical and epistemological question of standpoints in doing research about organizational diversity.

Studying Diversity in Organizations: The Role of Methods

Diversity researchers seem to share an intuitive understanding of what is meant by organizational diversity, namely the variation between people within an organizational context (e.g., employees of a company, members of a union, volunteers in a charity) (Özbilgin, 2008). The object of study for diversity research, therefore, is this variation – its conditions of possibility, articulations, and practices as well as its consequences. Beyond that, however, the central concept of diversity is arguably somewhat undertheorized within the field. Defined simply as the variation of people or the sum of differences, diversity has been the assumed backdrop rather than the center of attention of the field, its blind spot rather than its focal point. Diversity, it has been suggested, is the empty signifier or lack of both diversity theory and practice (Christensen & Muhr, 2018; Gunder, 2005). Constructed as the other of identity (Just & Remke, 2019; Villesèche, Muhr, & Holck, 2018), diversity is at best an ambiguous concept, the variations of which have been noted but not fully mapped (Christiansen & Just, 2012; Risberg & Just, 2015). In noting this lacuna, we are not advocating theoretical hegemony, but nuance. We are not asking for theories that substantiate and delimit what diversity is, but, instead, suggesting further theorization of how diversity comes to be and what it effects. Thus, further meta-theorization is needed; what is diversity, ontologically and epistemologically speaking? Ultimately, this is the challenge of diversity research – and exploring the methodologies of the field offers opportunities for elucidating it in nuanced and novel ways.

In response to this challenge, this book seeks to provide readers with fresh looks on tried out research designs for diversity studies in contemporary organizations as well as more recent takes on ways to renew and extend the toolbox. The book is not intended as a how-to-do-diversity-research manual, but as inspiration for further exploration. In addition to providing critiques of and novel perspectives on long-used methods, the chapters question the role of the researcher in the field, theorize the researcher and their methods as activism, or problematize research standpoints and their ontological and epistemological dimensions. With this, we hope to reflect scholars’ shifting emphases on the identification of diversity and related practices (including concerns for intersectionality), the critique of such categorizations and practices, as well as the more recent emphasis on intervention.

In focusing on the methods of diversity research, two questions present themselves. First, what do we mean by a focus on methods? Second, do diversity studies call for particular methods? The question of defining and delimiting the discussion of methods is a contentious one: For some, this discussion should be circumscribed to practices of collecting and/or analyzing empirical data; for others, it should always encompass attention to positionality and/or epistemology. In other words, some distinguish clearly between methods and methodology, whereas others see both as part of the same discussion. For this book, we have sought to include both views by asking our authors to present particular methods, but also to reflect on the question of methodology. It is also to be noted that none of the chapters claim to present methods that are unique to the field of diversity studies. Rather, they consider how well-established or newer methods – be they qualitative or quantitative, explorative or explanatory – are a fit for and/or can be adapted to the field. The chapters also exemplify the methodological diversity, creativity, and reflexivity that is a hallmark of the field. Further, while individual chapters present and discuss a specific method or methodological aspect, reading the chapters alongside each other will hopefully inspire readers to make connections and consider how the methods might be mixed and matched or contrasted.

In what follows, we provide an introduction to the contents of the book, weaving our voices into those of the authors of the different chapters of the book. This should give the reader a sense of what we sought to achieve in the different parts of this Companion and of how the chapters converse with each other within the four parts of the book as well as across them.

Overview of the Book

Besides this introduction and the concluding chapter, the volume is organized into four parts: Diverse bodies and the research context, Inclusive research, Doing field work, From data to analysis. We see this book not as an edited collection of papers; instead, it is a rich resource for anyone interested in learning how to research diversity in organizations or seeking to develop their research designs and reflecting on their standpoints and positions in the process. In this regard, the handbook also significantly distinguishes itself from previously published books that focus either on the results of diversity research or on providing an extensive panorama of methods that can be applied to such a field. Also, it is noteworthy that the authors of the different chapters are junior as well as senior scholars affiliated with research institutions around the world, although we should acknowledge the majority of them are European. Sadly, Western voices still characterize the field and, hence, also this book.

Diverse Bodies and the Research Context

While the concern for or acknowledgment of situatedness or positionality is often absent in discussion of methods, our interest in a broader take on methodology as well as the fact that we work with questions of diversity led us to place this question up front, making it the first rather than the last section of the book. Indeed, we believe it is important to address the questions of who speaks and where one speaks from before we address methods as tools for research. In other words, no matter the particular method employed, diversity researchers must acknowledge that they do not see and speak from nowhere but are always already positioned in relation to their topics of research.

Further, diversity researchers must consider how their methodological choices create, maintain, and/or transform the specific situation of knowledge production and, hence, the situated knowledges produced. As Donna Haraway (1988, p. 592) argues:

Situated knowledges require that the object of knowledge be pictured as an actor and agent, not as a screen or a ground or a resource, never finally as a slave to the master that closes off the dialectic in his unique agency and his authorship of “objective” knowledge.

This means that not only the researcher of diversity but also the objects of diversity research must be re-positioned as subjects and, as such, become active participants in diversity studies. Such re-positioning may seem more urgent for studies that engage directly with minoritized individuals or groups or other subjects – individual or collective – that experience exclusion from and/or discrimination within organizational settings and, hence, are the targets of diversity initiatives. Relatedly, this calls attention to the role of the researcher. Who are we to judge the individual lives and organizational contexts we study? In fact, who are we to study them in the first place? These questions recur in many of the contributions to this book.

Thus, doing diversity research involves careful consideration of the researcher’s own subject position. All too often, we, as researchers speak from a majority position, on behalf of the studied minority. No matter how well-intentioned and intentionally inclusive – even participatory – such research is in its design and its methods, the situatedness of its knowledge remains problematic insofar as it inherently reproduces relations of empowered-empowering, preserving the researcher’s ability – and, hence, privilege – to bestow powers on others. But does this mean that we, as researchers, can only study subject positions with whom we ourselves identify, acting as members of communities rather than as allies or assistants? While such a move might be tempting, it would actually not solve the problem of privilege as the researcher-as-minoritized-subject would still speak for other subjects within the minority, silencing their potential differences.

The chapters in Part I of the book all situate the researcher in relation to the researched, beginning with Greedharry, Ahonen, and Tienari’s discussion of the importance of situating diversity research in relation to colonialism. Beyond the question of cultural differences in knowing, they interrogate the Western definition of diversity and what diversity research should be. We then move on to two chapters on the interrelations between the racialized bodies of the researchers and the “researched”. In Chapter 3, Liu speaks from the position of a researcher representing a minority group, interrogating how diversity is defined in white terms, both in theory and in practice. She explores how one can research diversity from an anti-racist standpoint using specific methodological tools. Holck and Muhr, in Chapter 4, speak from the positions of researchers represe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Researching Organizational Diversity: Opportunities and Challenges
• Part I Diverse Bodies and the Research Context
• Part II Inclusive Research
• Part III Doing Field Work
• Part IV From Data to Analysis
• Conclusion
• Index