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Now well into the 21st century, the world’s most powerful organizations’ highest executive levels and boards of directors still fail to represent a diverse collection of people shaped by unique social identity dimensions according to age, class, culture, ethnicity, faith/spirituality, gender, physical/psychological ability, sexual orientation, and more. Offered in this book is an investigation into why a homophily framework, or a similarity-attraction hypothesis, continues to perpetuate leadership by predominantly Caucasian/White males and reinforces barriers that keep qualified people possessing a multiplicity of social identity dimensions from achieving their full human potential.

To understand interactive processes through which discrimination is reproduced in the workplace, social identity theorists explore connections between ways that people create social identity and that organizations become socially constructed. Social identity theory explains how people seek to develop oneness with groups that help them to develop and/or to enhance positive self-esteem – and to better understand how people develop notions of high-status ingroups and low-status outgroups. Both of these frameworks are central to this book’s attention to difference in organizations. Difference is positioned as a positive advance in organizational dynamics; advocating respect and appreciation for multiple and intersecting social identities – not for profitability and other business case reasons – but because it is morally justified to eradicate inequitable and exclusionary practices in organizations. This book offers an introduction to doing difference research by introducing a number of theoretical underpinnings, addressing methodological challenges, and presenting a wide cross-section of numerous bodies of literature which have been attending to difference work. Chapter 1 is divided into subthemes of: applying social identity theory, emphasizing the “center” and the “margin,” managing organizational climate, and avoiding business case thinking and other flawed models by advocating for real diversity.

This paper aims to evaluate critically the conventional binary hierarchical representation of the formal/informal economy dualism which reads informal employment as a residual and marginal sphere that has largely negative consequences for economic development and needs to be deterred.

To contest this depiction, the results of 600 household interviews conducted in Ukraine during 2005/2006 on the extent and nature of their informal employment are reported.

Informal employment is revealed to be an extensively used form of work and, through a richer and more textured understanding of the multiple roles that different forms of informal employment play, a form of work that positively contributes to economic and social development, acting both as an important seedbed for enterprise creation and development and as a primary vehicle through which community self‐help is delivered in contemporary Ukraine.

This survey reveals that depicting informal employment as a hindrance to development and deterring engagement in this sphere results in state authorities destroying the entrepreneurial endeavour and active citizenship that other public policies are seeking to nurture. The paper concludes by addressing how this public policy paradox might start to be resolved.

This paper is one of the first to document the role of informal employment in nurturing enterprise creation and development as well as community exchange.

The purpose of this paper is to present the proposition that culture in international management has been dominated by a “Western dualism to measuring culture” (Caprar et al., 2015, p. 1024), which has resulted in severe problems and persistent limitations. The suggestion is that cultural research can be more productively conceived as a paradox involving a duality between two contrasting yet co-determined spheres or domains.

The paper provides an outline of culture as a paradox and an outline of a research approach to address the dualities of culture.

A cultural duality is described, which involves a paradoxical “yin-yang” relationship between two contrasting yet mutually constituted aspects of the collective mind. One domain, which involves conscious cognitive elements has dominated research characterized by positivism and empirical cross-cultural explorations of phenomenological cultural values. The second, more recondite domain, involves unconscious and embodied cultural phenomena, which are more tacit and hidden in indirect expression through communicative interaction, exchanges of symbolic representations and embodied behaviour in context.

A methodological duality of qualitative and quantitative mixing in order to provide a bi-focal understanding of both tacit and explicit aspects of culture is proposed as a research agenda.

The suggestion is that these cultural shadows have been relatively neglected thus far in cross-cultural management research. This means that in order to better comprehend culture as paradox, an equalization of approaches sensitive to both sides of the duality is prescient. In pursuit of this idea, a complementary qualitative analysis directed at more nebulous cultural phenomena is proposed in order to provide a balanced analysis of culture as paradox.

Research projects designed to examine social identity difference in organizations are driven by a passion to affect positive change that ultimately leads to a more just society rather than one which enables status quo power perpetuation and continues to marginalize certain people and inhibit them from achieving personal and career goals. This important change requires the support of all people and not just those who use a simplistically essentialist dyad because they feel a personal connection or because such avenues of inquiry are considered off limits when a researcher or a manager does not “match” members of specific minority groups. Polyvocality is necessary to exorcise -isms in the workplace and larger global communities, so this important work is everyone’s responsibility.

In Chapter 2, difference is operationalized and it is acknowledged that recognizing power differentials between ourselves as researcher and our respondents or participants as researched is a starting point in any important journey when exploring social identity difference. Researching across social identity difference is examined, the simplistically essentialist dyad or racial-matching paradigm is critiqued, and the partial perspective and lived experience orientations are advanced. Useful guidance and methodological techniques also are offered for self-reflexive moves when considering research paradigms, theoretical underpinnings, data collection procedures, data interpretation and analysis steps, and dissemination of findings – as well as discussion about ways that institutionalized power can intervene in potentially risky ways for researchers of social identity and difference.

This book represents an integration of numerous theory streams and approaches so that researchers of social identity difference will have at least one go-to source for engaging with potential analytical, ethical, and methodological challenges. Chapter 2 is divided into these central subthemes: what is social identity difference?, power issues among researchers and the researched, techniques for doing social identity difference research, and researching across social identity difference and the matching paradigm.

In this chapter, the authors explore the “hidden curriculum” that is enacted when the teaching-self transmits to the learning-self, the being aspects of the teacher. It is proposed that these aspects are communicated through discursive and nondiscursive materials. The latter includes energetic, emotional, and gestural “languages.” An argument is made that the current, modernist conceptions and practices of education that predominantly focus on covering and downloading curriculum materials do not create openings for exploring the being aspects of teachers and learners. Moreover, acknowledging Avraham Cohen's thesis, “We teach who we are, and that's the problem,” the authors explore the hurtful and damaging influence of the teachers' “Shadow materials.” An argument is made for the moral imperative of teachers' (or anyone who is in a position of influencing others) self-study to minimize or prevent hurtful and damaging influences that could have a long-lasting impact on the students' or learners' self-formation. The authors propose the method of inner work, integrated with contemplative inquiry and practices, as a way for educators to work with the materials of consciousness. Inner work largely involves working through psychological projections, introjections, and entanglements that permeate one's inner world. Some details of inner work are offered, including how to facilitate a dialogue between the parts or subselves in one's inner world that are in tension and conflict. It has been further proposed that this kind of inner work would lay the necessary foundation for becoming kinder, caring, and more compassionate human beings.

This paper is guided by the question “How do the generalised findings from a gender analysis of workplace learning translate to understanding learning in an aged care workplace?” The method is to analyse the research data in terms of a gender analysis of workplace learning literature. The findings represent a map of potentials and limitations for workplace learning under conditions of globalisation in an aged care organisation. These findings will be used to facilitate development of workplace learning and to suggest directions for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a more integrative and inclusive conceptualisation of reflexivity as a way of identifying, understanding and managing some of the risks associated with reflexivity's potentially solipsistic “inward turn”.

The paper draws on the authors' experience of empirical qualitative research with working carers. This experience is grounded within the traditions of interpretative phenomenology and critical epistemology.

Two reflexive risks: an unintended focus on researcher rather than participant; and process at the expense of substance are discussed and the first of these, reflexive narcissism, is associated with the recognition of biographical similarity between researcher and participant, and the second, a kind of reflexive “process‐ism”, with certain research designs involving meta‐reflection with participants on the research experience. The paper advocates the use of multiple reflexivities and an intrinsic sensibility to reflexive possibility throughout the duration of a research programme.

The paper offers an alternative model of reflexivity and some practical guidelines, which may be of value to researchers working across a range of different qualitative methodologies.

The paper makes some preliminary observations about the phenomenon of the working carer, which may be of value to organisational practitioners.

The approach to reflexivity outlined in this paper helps to clarify some of the issues and difficulties associated with the reflexive thesis, and in particular, will help less experienced qualitative researchers to avoid some common pitfalls of reflexive practice.

This chapter proposes using a dialectical approach infused with elements of dialogism to analyze polyphonic discourses of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in order to create more nuanced understandings of the contradictions, oppositions, tensions, and complexities that characterize the conceptualization, enactment, and communication of CSR.

This chapter draws upon the notion of dialectics discussed by scholars such as Hegel and Marx and infuses it with Bakhtinian notions of dialogism to create a dialectical framework for analyzing discourses of CSR.

This chapter illustrates the conceptual argument for a dialectical approach to examining discourses of CSR by using the example of the dualistic discussion of corporations as agents of empowerment or exploitation. When examined through a dialectical lens, the empowerment–exploitation debate reveals, among others, the dissolution of boundaries between the categories of empowerment and exploitation, the coexistence and interplay of a multitude of related oppositions, and raises questions on praxical patterns employed by social actors to manage the dialectical tensions inherent in everyday organizing.

A dialectical approach in communication studies could open possibilities for acknowledging the co-existence of and interplay among multiple voices in society, thus opening spaces for engaging with diverse perspectives and creating a more holistic understanding of complex social constructs such as CSR.

A dialectical approach that attends to tensions negotiated by social and organizational actors as they try to conceptualize, enact, and communicate CSR can enrich the study of polyphonic discourses of CSR by generating more textured and insightful understandings of CSR than those currently examined through mostly dualistic lenses.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the methodological implications of queering organizational research. The author examines three related questions: what does queering organizational research entail?; how have organizational scholars queered research to date?; and how does queering organizational research and methodologies advance our understandings of organizing processes?

The paper begins with an overview of queer theory, which is followed by a review of the ways in which organizational research and methodologies have been and can be queered. The paper concludes with a discussion of the value of queering organizational research and methodologies and offers research questions that can guide future research that draws from queer theory.

The author claims that methodologies are queered through a researcher’s commitment to enacting the philosophical assumptions of queer theory in a research project. Much of the value of queering methodologies lies in its disruption and critique of conventional research practices, while enabling us to explore new ways of understanding organizational life.

Queer theory is still nascent but growing in organizational research. To date, there has been little consideration of the methodological implications of queering organizational research. This paper discusses these implications and can thus guide future research that is informed by queer theory.

This paper explores the role of accounting in a religious setting and evaluates the sacred‐secular divide developed by Laughlin and Booth who suggested that accounting is antithetical to religious values, embodying the secular as opposed to the sacred. Yet Christian thinkers such as Wesley and Neibuhr reject this position and indicate the accounting and financial issues do not necessarily conflict with religious values.

This paper explores narratives drawn from the Church of Scotland, the life and practices of Charles Wesley and the Christian doctrine of stewardship as a way of determining the verisimilitude of the “accounting as secular” claim.

These accounts and individual perceptions drawn from the Church of Scotland were more consistent with the concept of a jurisdictional conflict between accountants and clergy than a sacred‐secular divide. The life of John Wesley and the doctrine of stewardship show that accounting can be part of practices of spirituality. Sacred or secular accounting was found to be an issue of perception.

There is scope for future research into perceptions of accounting and the role(s) of accounting in sacred spaces.

This paper highlights the sacred role and aspects to accounting.