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In this article, we argue that a key diversity issue to be tackled in the classroom is disparity: Some students are more privileged than others, and their inputs are more valued than others'. Therefore, as educators, we need to devise new ways to rebalance benefits and deficits in our classrooms. Complementing critical work on privilege in business schools that has exposed and theorized the problem, we take a practical, By design approach to addressing privilege while avoiding diversity education dilemmas. We propose that such a proactive rather than reactive approach can help mitigate the negative consequences that the exercise of privilege may have on our students' learning. Specifically, we propose that we can learn from designers how to use tools that help create collaborative, positive-sum environments when conducting team-based activities in the classroom. We present a selection of simple yet powerful design devices: Speaking rules, Problem framing, and Iteration. We discuss how these devices may help address privilege in the classroom with illustrative examples and reflections on the outcomes and limitations of these devices. We thus enrich the underdeveloped conversation on how design methods can be translated and applied to management education.

Although corporate alumni networks are a developing practice, academia has said very little about them and their members. In this article, our goal is to provide an account of how members of such networks construct themselves as alumni. To that end, we adopt a narrative approach to identity construction and empirically explore the identity work that the members of one corporate alumni network carry out in order to sustain their identification with a past organizational setting. Our case study leads us to document four 'identity stratagems' (Jenkins, 1996) through which members incorporate elements of their past professional experience into their self-narratives: nostalgia, reproduction, validation and combination. It thus allows for a better understanding of corporate alumni networks and their members, while also contributing to the broader identity literature by further documenting how organizational participants can incorporate elements of a past professional experience into their self-narratives.

Examining the theoretical connections between identity and diversity, this new book explores how diversity management practices can be better informed by an enhanced understanding of the relationship between the two fields. Highlighting the relevance of identity to diversity studies, the authors concentrate on three key areas: social identity theory; critical perspectives on identity; and poststructuralist understandings. With the aim of fueling future research, this insightful book outlines a detailed research agenda and offers practical suggestions. Not only useful to academics, this book also seeks to encourage policy-makers and HR managers to develop current practices and make more research-informed management decisions.

How do women's business networks help to advance women's freedom? Drawing on Zerilli's freedom-centred feminism, our study sets out to answer this question at the intersection of freedom, feminism and work. Critics argue that women's business networks promote a postfeminist view of freedom focusing on individual self-realisation and thus participate in rolling back collective, feminist efforts to dismantle structural inequalities. We reconceptualise women's business networks as political arenas and argue that making claims about shared interests and concerns in such an arena constitutes a feminist practice of freedom. With an original, inductive and qualitative research design combining topic modeling and dialectical analysis, we examine the claims made in 1529 posts across four women's business network blogs. We identify postfeminist claims and new forms of change and transformation that can help to advance women's freedom across three 'dialectics of freedom': conformity and imagination; performative care and relational care; sameness and openness. Our findings show that uncertain and contradictory ways of defining and engaging with women's freedom can emerge through claim-making in such arenas. The fragility of the process and its outcomes are, then, what can move feminism forward at work and beyond.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the identity and diversity literatures and discuss how a better understanding of the theoretical connections between the two informs both diversity research and diversity management practices.Design/methodology/approach– Literature review followed by a discussion of the theoretical and practical consequences of connecting the identity and diversity literatures.Findings– The authors inform future research in three ways. First, by showing how definitions of identity influence diversity theorizing in specific ways. Second, the authors explore how such definitions entail distinct foci regarding how diversity should be analyzed and interventions actioned. Third, the authors discuss how theoretical coherence between definitions of identity and diversity perspectives – as well as knowledge about a perspective's advantages and limitations – is crucial for successful diversity management research and practice.Research limitations/implications– The authors argue for a better understanding of differences, overlaps and limits of different identity perspectives, and for a stronger engagement with practice.Practical implications– The work can encourage policy makers, diversity and HR managers to question their own practices and assumptions leading to more theoretical informed diversity management practices.Originality/value– The theoretical connections between identity and diversity literature have so far not been reviewed systematically. The work foregrounds how important it is for diversity scholars to consider identity underpinnings of diversity research to help further develop the field within and beyond the three streams the authors discuss.