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Diversity as Polyphony: Reconceptualizing Diversity Management from a Communication-Centered Perspective

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Abstract

In this paper, we propose reconceptualizing diversity management from a communication-centered perspective. We base our proposal on the observation that the literature on diversity management, both in the instrumental and critical traditions, is primarily concerned with fostering the diversity of organizational members in terms of individual-bound criteria (e.g., gender, age, or ethnicity). By drawing on Bakhtin’s notion of polyphony as well as the ‘communicative constitution of organizations’ (CCO) perspective, we suggest reconsidering diversity as the plurality of ‘voices’ which can be understood as the range of individual opinions and societal discourses that get expressed and can find resonance in organizational settings. We contribute to the literature on diversity management by moving away from a focus on individual-bound and inalterable criteria of diversity and toward a reconceptualization of diversity management as dynamic processes of voice articulation and mediation.

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Notes

  1. The term ‘discursive diversity’ is not entirely new but has been used in other contexts before. For instance, Flores and McPhail (1997) draw on the same term in the area of media studies for critically discussing the role of mass media in contributing to the social construction of (individual human) differences.

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Acknowledgments

Previous versions of this paper have been presented at the European Group of Organizational Studies (EGOS) Colloquium 2012 in Helsinki, Finland, and at the Academy of Management (AoM) Annual Meeting 2014 in Philadelphia/PA, USA. We thank section editor Nicola Pless and the three anonymous reviewers for their guidance and advice. We also thank Nicolas Bencherki, Bill McKinley, Heike Mensi-Klarbach, Jawwad Raja, Robyn Remke, Jens Rennstam, Andreas G. Scherer, Steen Vallentin, Florence Villesèche, Christian Voegtlin, and Glen Whelan for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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  1. Department of Business Administration, University of Zurich, Universitaetstr. 84, 8006, Zurich, Switzerland

    Hannah Trittin

  2. Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, Copenhagen Business School, Porcelaenshaven 18A, 2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Dennis Schoeneborn

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  1. Hannah Trittin
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Correspondence to Hannah Trittin.

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Trittin, H., Schoeneborn, D. Diversity as Polyphony: Reconceptualizing Diversity Management from a Communication-Centered Perspective. J Bus Ethics 144, 305–322 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2825-8

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