Critical Studies in Diversity Management Literature: A Review and Synthesis

This book critically examines current workplace diversity management practices and explores a nuanced framework for undertaking, supporting, and implementing policies that equally favor all people. It presents critical perspectives that not only elevate respect for differences but also provide insights into the nature and dynamics of differences in view of an inclusive and truly participative organizational environment.
The book first presents a brief overview of the connotations associated with workplace diversity and its effective management. Next, it focuses on the organizational appropriation of differences through the formation and mediation of various diversity discourses. It demonstrates the particular articulations of these discourses with inequality and oppressive structures that perpetuate structural disadvantage due to existing power disparity between dominant and unprivileged group members. The book then goes on to underscore the need of constructing relational and context-sensitive diversity management frameworks.
Overall, the book outlines that current business cases for diversity focus solely on instrumental goals and tangible outcomes and, as a result, fail to fully capture the complexity as well as the particularity of the diversity phenomenon. The book underlines the necessity for a more inclusive paradigm, implying a progressive problem-shift in the dominant diversity research agenda from a market-driven business-oriented diversity management to one highly valuing, affirming, and respecting otherness.

George Gotsis is an Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and History of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He holds a PhD degree in Economics as well as a phD degree in Political Science. His main research interests comprise diversity management ethics, ethical HRM, workplace spirituality and spiritual leadership, religion in business, and organizational politics. His research has been published in scholarly journals such as: Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Management Research Review, Journal of Enterprising Communities, History and Anthropology, Journal of Enterprising Culture, International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, History of Economic Ideas, and History of Economics Review, among others.

Zoe Kortezi is a Phd Candidate at the Department of Philosophy and History of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She is currently preparing a doctoral thesis on diversity management implementation. Her main research interests include, among others, diversity management at the organizational level, business ethics, work ethics and employee relations. She has published (in collaboration with George Gotsis) in scholarly journals such as: Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Management Research Review and Journal of Enterprising Communities.

Chapter 1: Workplace Diversity: A Resource or a Source of Conflict?.- Chapter 2: Different Approaches to Managing a Diverse Workforce.- Chapter 3: The Rhetoric of Diversity Management: How Critical Diversity Studies Explicate Organizational Appropriation of Differences.- Chapter 4: The Social Construction of Diversity Discourses: Critical Perspectives on Diversity Management, Power and Inequality.- Chapter 5: Operationalizing Critical Diversity Theories: A Contextual Framework of Implementing New Diversity Practices.