Research question

Reading across the four articles that make up this dissertation brings answer to the following overall two-part research question:

34

How may organisational diversity be conceptualised norm-critically, and how does said conceptualisation contribute to the study and practice of organising diversity alternatively?

In order to answer the research question, one needs to unpack and consider what diversity is in relation to organisation(s). A relevant question that comes to mind concerns how diversity is organised. And to say anything meaningful about organising diversity alternatively entails knowledge about what exactly alternative organisation is. Also, in conceptualising norm critique, I struggled to bring together two concepts and make them one, for what are norms and what is critique? Not taking it for granted, what is it you do when critiquing something and when that something – the object of your critique – is norms? Already in phrasing these sub-questions, it is evident that I am tainted by a performative ontology: critique is expressed as something one does, meaning it is assumed to have performative effects. Norm critique does more than merely criticise its object; it moulds and seeks to change the norm that it critiques. While the individual articles also pick up on these sub-questions, it is the explicit purpose of the chapters that precede them to do so. For example, situating my dissertation within the fields of critical diversity management and organisation studies, the literature review chapter positions diversity as an organisation theoretical discipline, thereby answering the question about what diversity is in relation to organisation(s).

1.4 (UN)PACKING (FOR) THE JOURNEY

In this dissertation, I argue for the application of norm critique to replace that of diversity and inclusion. I do so for several reasons that I unpack in the literature review ahead of presenting the articles in which norm critique is conceptualised.

35

My reasons for substituting diversity and inclusion for norm critique can be summarised as follows: diversity puts emphasis on the other, on that which is different from the norm. It is this other who is to be included in the norm by the normal ones that are already included. Norm critique shifts focus away from the other. It is not the other, the one ascribed with diversity discourse, who is to be fixed in order to fit or overly valued for their perceived difference. With norm critique, it is the norm itself that is (re)evaluated with the purpose of expanding, changing, even subverting it to accommodate that which is excluded and, in that process, comes to appear as diverse due to its deviation from a norm that does not include it.

Importantly, norm critique puts the politics back in diversity. As I will show in the literature review, the particular form of organising that diversity has taken in a business context – that of diversity management – is heavily criticised for applying an everybody-is-different discourse, thereby depoliticising the practice in that it becomes ignorant of group-related structural inequalities. As such, diversity management might manage to include difference, but it will be within existing norms and institutions. This brings me to a second point.

Not only do I apply norm critique rather than diversity and inclusion, but also I suggest norm-critical organisation to replace diversity management. A key takeaway from my review of organisation studies literature is that management, historically and as presently practiced, implies control and regulation. To manage diversity, therefore, is to control for diversity, the idea being that regulation may utilise people’s differences in such a fashion that they contribute either directly or at least indirectly to organisational outcomes, preferably by increasing productivity and efficiency, in which case it would be more accurate to talk of managerialism and not just management.

36

Diversity management strongly insinuates that diversity is a practice that someone already included (a manager) does unto the other (those to be included). It is done for and on behalf of the other, but not with the other. Norm critique, with its queer-theoretical roots, is at odds with the norm and grants us insights into how others, who are also odd to the norm, in fact do much of the diversity work. Here I am thinking of Ahmed’s (2017: 135) dual definition of diversity work as something non-conforming bodies do when inhabiting normative spaces differently (e.g.

downplaying one’s difference so as not to disturb the norm and normal functioning of organisation) and as the institutional work of banging your head against a brick wall and its normative foundation. Diversity work, from a norm-critical perspective, is something that everybody does. Certainly, it is not the prerogative of management or someone who happens to hold the title of manager. Everybody affects and is affected by the ongoing organisation of diversity, meaning diversity, or rather difference, is a given (a condition) and not something ‘out there’ (a problem) that can be included. An organisation (as an entity) is constituted based on exclusion, which shapes the boundaries of the organisation. But organisation (as a process) always-already involves difference, as is also acknowledged in the organisation studies literature. The question is how it is organised. And that takes me to one final point.

Norm critique, I argue, is an orientation. Just like sexuality is often denoted as an orientation that has implications for what objects (or who) desire is directed toward, norm critique is a particular way of orienting ourselves when researching and practicing organisational diversity. And how we are oriented affects not only how we reside in this world, but also how we apprehend it. That is, the ways in which diversity is and may be organised will depend on what diversity concept one subscribes to. The norm-critical orientations that I develop over the course of four

37

articles present a shift in the types of organisations studied. This shift allows me to grasp the organisation form in a specific way – so too does the shift in research design.

For example, in the corporate workplace organisation that I initially negotiated with, I would most likely have devoted my analytical attention to leadership, training programmes, policies, etc., because these areas were already imbued with diversity discourse. That was not an option in the organisations that ended up forming part of my project. Interestingly, Roskilde Festival (see article four) began working on a diversity policy only after I joined the organisation. This, I believe, is also why I found Roskilde Festival fascinating in the first place: there appeared to be a genuine opportunity for the organisation to affect me and for me to affect it back, to exert influence not over but on my case organisation as well as my object of study. The affective capacity in diversity was something I encountered and was able to ascertain in Roskilde Festival – an atmospheric diversity feeling that points to sense of belonging and a more qualitative understanding of diversity, necessarily requiring an approach to organisation different from quantitative numerical accounting of diversity.