Apologies for cross-postings: Revised deadline 15 February 2012
5th Equality, Diversity and Inclusion International Conference, 2012,
Toulouse, France
23-25 July, 2012, Toulouse Business School
Stream 18 : DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT AND IDENTITY REGULATION
Stream Convenor :
Dr Olivia Kyriakidou, Assistant Professor in Organisational Behavior, Athens
University of Economics and Business, Department of Business Administration,
Patision 76, 10434 Athens, Greece,
okyriakidou@aueb.gr
Twenty years after the emergence of diversity into the world of management,
we need to have a concrete idea regarding the effects of diversity onto
organizations design, internal processes and outputs. Moreover, we need to
critically explore the role diversity management initiatives play in modern
post-Fordist organizations. In this sense, we aim to explore in this
sub-theme whether diversity management represents a new, indirect mode of
control, next to HRM and the management of organizational culture. Three
main research questions guide the philosophy of our exploration:
a) Could diversity be seen as a major form of control that operates through
the regulation of identity?
b) What narratives are produced within the realm of diversity management and
to what extent do they provide specific constructions of the minority
individuals?
c) How do the working subjects use such construction in order to define
themselves?
We are concerned primarily with how the narrative and practice of diversity
management accomplishes managerial control through the self-positioning of
employees within managerially inspired discourses about work and
organization with which they may become more or less identified and
committed. Is the modern business of diversity management a form of managing
employees hopes, fears, and aspirations, rather than their behaviours
directly? How is diversity management discourse enriched by the use of
cultural media which produce positive and seductive meanings for minority
individuals and lead to their subordination and control? We need to
understand more in depth how diversity management may promote, more or less
self-consciously, a particular form of organizational experience, for
consumption by employees. In this sense, we need studies that focus directly
upon the discursive and reflexive processes of identity constitutions and
regulation within the realm of diversity management. We need to explore how
mechanisms and practices of diversity management work inside the
individuals quest for self-definition, coherence and meaning.
However, the organizational regulation of identity is a precarious and
contested process involving extensive identity work. Organisational members
are not reducible to passive consumers of managerially designed and
designated identities. In this sense, what type of identity work is evident
in managerial efforts to introduce the discursive practices of diversity
management?
Concluding, our first aim in this sub-theme, is to advance an understanding
of minority individuals identity construction as a process in which the
role of diversity management discourse in influencing the individual is
balanced with other elements of the individuals identities. Moreover, we
aim to explore and specify the different means diversity management uses in
order to pursue control through the regulation of identity. Finally, since
organizational control is not necessarily effective in changing individuals
subjectivity and increasing their loyalty, we aim to specify acts of
resistance and how they are lived by minority individuals. It is our
intention to encourage the problematization of the established notion and
conceptualization of diversity management and urge organizational and other
theorists to render visible and question the taken-for-granted
understandings that sustain and reproduce established boundaries in current
diversity management initiatives.
Publication partnerships of EDI 2012 Toulouse conference
Associated to this conference are British Journal of Management,
Cross-Cultural Management : an International Journal ; Equality, Diversity,
Inclusion: an International Journal, European Journal of International
Management and the European Journal of Industrial Relations. Pre selected
best papers of the conference will be submitted to these journals who will
process them according to their usual standards.
Relevant papers will be eligible to be included in the second edition of the
International Handbook on Diversity Management at Work (to be published in
2013 with Edward Elgar), under the chief-editorship of Alain Klarsfeld.
Stream organizers alongside participants to their stream may also want to
write a summary comparative paper which might then qualify for this book
project. See call
http://www.viadeo.com/fr/event/006gnzvl84zvhv0/diversity-and-equality-intern
ational-research-project
Stream organizers are also advised that the book series Equality, Diversity
and Inclusion at Work (Book series by Emerald) headed by Professor Mustafa
Özbilgin is associated to the conference and relevant stream proposals will
be eligible for this book series subject to acceptance decision by professor
Özbilgin who will attend the conference.
Indicative framework for the processing of papers by stream chairs
Papers first versions: February 15, 2012. Papers will have to be subjected
to two peer reviews organized by stream chairs.
Deadline for 1st review: March 1, 2012 (acceptance, acceptance with
revisions following developmental feedback, rejection), 2012.
Deadline for revised paper: April 1, 2012
Final acceptance decision, best paper nominations and submission of best
papers to the relevant associated journal (as agreed by submitter): May 1,
2012.
The review process of the best papers by partner journals remains under the
total supervision of the respective journal chief-editors and independent
from the conference dates.