O N THE V ULNERABILITY OF D IVERSITY M ANAGEMENT

I am in a similar way critical towards the field of diversity management as it justifies its focus on differences by claiming it to be from an ethical wish to create equality and justice. In this way, most diversity management initiatives focus on categorical differences in order to support or promote a minority as for example women, people with different ethnic backgrounds, disabled people or people with ‘different’ sexualities. Differences are then calculated, formulized and subordinated to various guidelines and initiatives. These initiatives are most often initiated for the organization to do good or to be social responsible, but by focusing on the categorical differences, the initiatives often risk creating greater negative attention to the minorities and thus even greater segregation. People become Same.

The world is multiple and there is no way that we can agree on what the right approach towards minorities is or what is best for them. Some might want to be different, and some probably just want to blend in, some wants special attention some don’t. Some want to be appreciated for a certain difference, some for something completely other. Some might find diversity initiatives

offending, and some might even find them repressive. In a recent study (Muhr, 2008c) I have identified a repressive tolerance towards women in Danish consultancy firms. In a large case study, where 60 consultants from three large international consultancy firms were interviewed (both male and female), it turned out that diversity initiatives, which were implemented to improve women’s terms in the companies, in fact resulted in decreasing their possibilities for promotions. The tolerance and generosity given to women and the encouragement to combine work and family kept them from winning the promotion race and as a result still kept them away from the top management positions. This therefore clearly showed that the diversity initiatives implemented to make women reach top management did rest on a wish to be

‘social responsible’, but had the completely opposite affect. By focusing on their apparent difference of being women and their special needs they became a marginalized group, which needed help and support. A support, which they found generous, but some also felt offending, because they didn’t want to be valued as women, who were important because they brought ‘female values’

to the company. They wanted to be valued for the job they performed—not their sex.

The above example together with the analyses in the thesis reveals a diversity management field—theoretical as well as practical—which is haunted by a failure to manage diversity. It is this failure, which I interpret as diversity management’s vulnerability and its call for a response—a response to shake and jolt it, and to interrupt it and deconstruct it ethically. In the process, it becomes clear that diversity management should direct its focus less on categorical differences and more on infinite otherness. The first destroys creativity by reducing diversity to sameness. The latter, which does not homogenize diversity, but instead acknowledges otherness, is the creative aspect of diversity, indeed, its face. The Other resists being managed.

Difference can be managed, otherness cannot; it is beyond the categories, and it is time for diversity to separate itself from the compulsiveness of management and celebrate what it is, namely, something radically Other.

This introduces another view on what it means to be different where not necessarily the categorical differences decide who and what a person is.

Instead, identity is constantly made and remade in the encounter with exteriority, a process, which means that diversity categories are always exceeded and transgressed. This means that diversity scholars as well as practitioners should learn to work with the fact that the non-categorical differences—otherness—cannot be classified into the rigid schemes and that diversity is more complex than that. Instead of an emphasis on the classification and management of diversity, I argue for a respect for the complexity of diversity. Instead of only managing differences, I also argue for a respect for the individual and for the otherness this individual holds. This all start with a different view on ethics—personal responsibility for the otherness of the Other.

This change implies that diversity scholars as well as practitioners must lessen their focus on minorities. By viewing diversity management as a fight for minorities, the Other is constructed as a not-Same instead of a true Other (see for example Irigaray, 1985, Sandford, 2002). The Same is in the above cases of South Africa and the female consultants the white and the men, and both the non-whites and the women are constructed as not-Same in the sense that they are minority positions against the established group perceived to be homogeneous. Instead of focusing on these two minority groups’ categorical difference of being non-white or non-male, they should be respected for their otherness as well as all the other differences that make them all different from one another. First, when we loose the categorical view, it will be possible to

see them as Others and what abilities they hold as Others, not as a group defined on one character trait—in these cases being black or woman. In South Africa things began to change when the categorical focus was exceeded, likewise with the consultants. First when they are seen as Others with individual needs, it will be possible to find ways of changing things.