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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.

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 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.

This chapter critically examines dialogues between indigenous feminists and academic feminists about the role and significance of indigenous epistemologies in constructing social scientific knowledge, particularly feminist epistemologies. We argue that the term indigenous feminisms must be understood as broadly linking gender equality, decolonization, and sovereignty for indigenous peoples. In Latin America, this term typifies an activist and practical movement with cultural, economic, and politically specific dimensions. We posit that analytical and theoretical frameworks developed from indigenous women’s ways of knowledge production should be recognized and legitimated in feminist discourse because much is learned from their worldview about women’s emancipation, the importance of intersectionality in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender in indigenous contexts, in addition to political and cultural critiques. We show that indigenous feminist theoretical formulations are not homogenous but overlap in some areas of theoretical and practical formulations that involve new conceptualizations of the body, space, time, action/movement, and memory.

A person’s value in terms of physical and mental abilities, talents and skills is not simply located in degrees of her/his body’s ability to function. Efforts to achieve social and workplace equality for people with a physical/body or psychological/mental disability have grown to a transnational social movement. The community of people with a disability may be among the largest, most diverse group of people. By examining disability through lenses of cultural, economic, and political contexts, Chapter 10 underscores the importance of understanding how and why experiences and issues associated with social identity shaped by these dimensions has captured the attention of policymakers and employers around the world.

A person’s identity is socially constructed and impacted by government policy, cultural values, and organizational decision making. The field of disability studies is dedicated to advancing greater understanding of experiences of people with a disability and empowering them to pursue happy and fulfilling lives. Institutionalized manifestations of stigma, ableism, discrimination, and bias diminish these pursuits, however. People everywhere and the organizations staffed and managed by them are urged to consider the positive outcomes of fully embracing people with a disability for their ability to perform responsibilities and to bring unique perspectives on organizational practices and exchanges with key stakeholders. Chapter 10 examines subthemes central to the study of social identity among people with a disability: paradigm shift and policy making about disability, legislation and policy, people working with a disability in organizations, language and naming debates, and disability and other social identity intersectionalities.

A review essay on Postmodernism, Economics and Knowledge. Edited by Stephen Cullenberg, Jack Amariglio and David F. Ruccio. London: Routledge, 2001. p. 495. Most economists agree that economic knowledge has gradually increased as more facts and data have been accumulated to support (or reject) theories. That is, economic knowledge and progress of the discipline have benefited from the scientific method. While not disputing this modernist conception of historical progress in economics, the articles in the volume consistently urge a broader discourse in economics, suggesting that without an expanded discourse economics will, as Hutchison (1979) argues, be “destined for a somewhat ambiguous and problematic place in the spectrum of knowledge” (p. 4). This edited volume discusses and seeks to discover what the postmodernist movement can add to broad economic discourse.

Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) students enrolled in a Masters program at an Australian university are often invisible or less visible in class; however, what is visible is their academic practice, which is often viewed as a deficit. Instead of comprehending how CALD students can become productive members of a community, research regularly examines ways to upgrade their academic literacy practices. This study contends that these students have much to offer, and if these students are to be considered valuable members of the higher education context, the learning community needs to perceive their difference as positive. This implies going beyond the institutional assessment of their academic practice as a deficit and examining spaces of learning as rhizomatic. Drawing on the theory of Deleuze and Guattari, this study highlights how the process of becoming for the students and the teacher teaching them is never static, but is one constituted of deterritorialization and subsequent reterritorialization, resulting in the rhizomatic principle of variegated subjectivity. Data collected over two years illustrated how, for the researcher/teacher, molecular level difference was possible within the molar level academic expectations. Themes of being and becoming and rhizomatic reimaginations demonstrated the desire of the students to achieve as a positive attempt to celebrate their difference and, for the researcher, her academic positionality as a fluid, ongoing process where the molar and the molecular interact to illustrate teaching as a productive venture.

This chapter offers an introduction to the major directions that the study of culture as a social identity dimension has taken theory building and practical application. Culture is explored as it relates to a way of life of a people through arts, beliefs, ceremonies, communication, customs, ethnicity, food, gossip, language, lifestyle, music, nation of origin, religion, ritual practices, stories, and more – and ways that this filters through organizations. Various interpretive and critical approaches are used to scrutinize the nature/culture debate, challenges in operationalizing culture, the circuitous process of culture, culture’s interactions with social structures, and intersectionalities of culture with other social identity dimensions.

Culture dimensions of social identity have been explored by social scientists intrigued by ways that people report negotiating among two or more cultures – double consciousness – and making cognitive shifts for strategic reasons. Too often, even well-intentioned social policies and research designed to advance cultural plurality – or multiculturalism – ends up focusing primarily on ethnic difference while overlooking other social identity dimensions and ignoring bases of cultural differentiation. Organizational culture as an outgrowth of communication, globalization contexts, profit-centric motives, and culture’s intersectionalities with other social identity dimensions is critiqued. Chapter 4 also explores these issues according to subthemes of: Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, culture and social identity, problems with culture and social identity for individuals, and managing organizational culture.