We address the uncertain outcomes of diversity work in organizations by showing that diversity management does not let itself be reduced to a matter of success and failure. Drawing upon theories of ambiguities in organizations and 2.5 years of longitudinal fieldwork in a Swedish municipality, we show that ambiguities characterize diversity work, including what diversity encompasses, the goals of diversity management, and its outcomes. To account for these ambiguities, we suggest approaching diversity management in terms of trying rather than outcomes. First, focusing on trying emphasizes that working with diversity entails a shifting, relative, and tension-filled notion. Second, it brings forth the tentative performativity of diversity management. Third, it opens up ways of looking at diversity in the workplace beyond a reductionist dichotomy between success and failure. Diversity work has no clear end, but this lack of an endpoint does not call into question its raison d'etre. On the contrary, it makes it a reason to insist on trying to strive for enhancing diversity.

Why do highly skilled migrants encounter difficulties getting a skilled job? In this study, instead of searching for an answer in migrants’ characteristics, we turn to organizations and ask: why do organizations underemploy highly skilled migrants? With an in-depth qualitative study of a programme for highly skilled migrants’ labour integration in Sweden, we show that highly skilled migrants are perceived as a potential threat to organizational norms and practices. Using the relational theory of risk – approaching risk as socially constructed – the study provides a novel explanation for highly skilled migrants’ underemployment. It shows an organization logic protecting corporate practices seen as ‘normal’ from a perceived disruption that employing highly skilled migrants could possibly cause. Theoretical contributions to the understanding of highly skilled migrants’ employability are threefold: (1) the field assumption that organizations are in favour of hiring migrants is challenged; (2) highly skilled migrants’ underemployment is explained through a protective organizational logic; and (3) we stress the necessity to problematize an implicit reference to organizational normality when recruiting.

Diversity research often relies on experiments to make causal claims about the effects of various attributes (e.g., gender or race/ethnicity) on organizationally-relevant outcomes. With this method, scholars intervene, then analyze the effect of the intervention on one or more outcomes. Until now, however, there remains a lack of clear, practical guidance on how to best study the effects of these attributes via experiments, including some of the theoretical and ethical implications that these design and method decisions might entail. Thus, we review the literature on experimental diversity research in organizations, highlighting illustrative publications and their design choices. Throughout, we highlight some strengths and potential pitfalls of these approaches. In line with the approach of this methods anthology, we also describe a recent set of experimental studies on intersecting aspects of diversity by the first author of this chapter (Gloor, Li, & Puhl, 2018) to practically exemplify some of the themes discussed within this chapter. We conclude with a discussion of ethical implications.

This chapter serves as an introduction to the Routledge Companion to Organizational Diversity Research Methods. We define and contextualize what we mean by organizational diversity and research methods, comment on the role of methods in the work of diversity scholars, and provide an overview of the different parts and chapters featured in the book. We thus introduce the aims of this book, which is to explore how diversity in organizations is and can be researched, providing readers with insights into the potential research designs for studies in contemporary organizations.

This track invites contributions that focus on organizational practices of organizing migrants’ integration into the labor market and their workplace integration and socialization, as well as on practices of organizing diverse workforce. We also invite contributions that explore how migrant workers relate to these practices of organizing by looking more carefully at the potential for agency among migrants themselves, in terms of their active mobilization in the transformation of such practices of organizing. Finally, we also welcome contributions that shed a light on consequences of such ways of organizing for both organizations and migrant- workers/jobseekers.

The authors review literature that focuses on women and minorities in the context of mergers and acquisitions (henceforth referred to as mergers for the sake of simplicity) aiming to explore how and to what extent diversity and gender issues are studied in merger research. The authors sort the reviewed research into three themes: the impact of gender on merger outcome, the impact of merger on women and minorities, and the impact of merger on diversity management and equality work. The authors suggest that it is important to conduct further studies on the topic but also assert that merger managers can learn from diversity management literature and practices how to manage employees with diverse backgrounds during the post-merger integration.

This article contributes to critical diversity management studies by exploring how human resources professionals do not see that the diversity measures they initiate can contribute to the reproduction of inequalities. We argue that framing such practices as benevolent obscures the fact that they are discriminatory acts. Drawing on the concept of benevolent discrimination, we conceptualise it along three dimensions: (1) a well-intended effort to address discrimination within (2) a social relationship that constructs the others as inferior and in need of help, which is granted with (3) the expectation that they will accommodate into the existing hierarchical order. Benevolent discrimination is a subtle and structural form of discrimination that is difficult to see for those performing it, because it frames their action as positive, in solidarity with the (inferior) other who is helped, and within a hierarchical order that is taken for granted. We develop the concept of benevolent discrimination building on an in-depth qualitative case study of a Swedish organisation that is believed to be exemplary in its engagement in diversity management initiatives. The organisation is however swayed by an inequality regime based on the intersection of class and ethnicity. We argue that it is precisely because human resources professionals frame their actions as acts of benevolence that they cannot see how they take part in organisational discrimination.

This case study illustrates how the voluntary engagement of the HR personnel into diversity initiatives targeting migrants inscribe their actions into an act of benevolence that re-establishes a social hierarchical relationship between natives and migrants. Through diversity initiatives, HR practitioners create an ambiguous social relationship blending solidarity towards migrants with a clear social order in which their existing value system prevails. This hierarchical order is materialized in the case study company’s structural discrimination, producing an inequality regime based on ethnicity and class. In addition, the initiation of HR personnel relationship with migrants is performed as a generous (benevolent) act, implicitly seen as a form of gift. HR professionals see themselves as giving migrants a chance, an opportunity, to enter the labor market. This implicit framing as a gift blurs the view of the social domination taking place and explains why HR professionals have difficulties in seeing their role in the discrimination of migrants taking place in their organization. Our study introduces the notion of benevolent discrimination. Benevolent discrimination articulates the well-meaning dimension of acceptance with the construction of the others as deficient and vulnerable, and therefore, in need of an act of benevolence for their empowerment. However, this empowerment is defined and limited by the initiator of benevolence into the existing naturalized order.

This is an editorial piece for a memorial special issue to commemorate the life of a colleague and friend. The authors are also the special issue editors.

The advantage of speed is often invoked by academics and practitioners as an essential condition during post-acquisition integration, frequently without consideration of the impact earlier decisions have on acquisition speed. In this article, we examine the role speed plays in acquisitions across the acquisition process using research organized around characteristics that display complexity with respect to acquisition speed. We incorporate existing research with a process perspective of acquisitions in order to present trade-offs, and consider the influence of both stakeholders and the pre-deal-completion context on acquisition speed, as well as the organization’s capabilities to facilitating that speed. Observed trade-offs suggest both that acquisition speed often requires longer planning time before an acquisition and that associated decisions require managerial judgement. A framework for improving manager decisions during acquisitions is discussed and its implications for managers and research summarized.

Taking as a starting point the assumption that ambiguity is a constitutive condition of organizational practices in general, and, more specifically, practices of diversity, this chapter offers a framework for exploring the practices and perceptions of three forms of ambiguous diversity: strategic ambiguity, contradiction, and ambivalence. Through an illustration of the framework’s empirical applicability, we find that while ambiguity as such is neither inherently good nor bad, the various forms of ambiguity have different potentials for promoting diversity in organizational settings. In particular, expressions of ambivalence seem to be well suited for fostering new and more inclusive practices of diversity.