Search results

"Diversity: A Key Idea for Business and Society introduces an idea that proliferates business and society, having been incorporated into mainstream theory and practice. Beyond this multidisciplinary setting, how diversity is defined, framed, managed, and regulated is also exposed to considerable social, economic, political and ideological interpretation and manipulation. This volume explores definitions of diversity, its various manifestations, and interdisciplinary influences that shape how diversity is researched. The text turns to workforce diversity as a particular case of diversity and explores antecedents, correlates, and consequences of workforce diversity. The author considers power, inequality, and intersectionality to illuminate the subject from the key manifestations, including class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and disability. With insights from an array of fields from economics, through management to biology, the author also highlights the various cases against diversity alongside analysis of how to navigate the diversity jungle in practice. This concise, authoritative book will be essential reading for students, researchers and reflective practitioners interested in workforce diversity as well as unique supplementary reading across the social sciences"--

Drawing on 66 interviews with key actors in the equality and diversity field in the UK, we operationalize Bourdieu's conception of the field, across the axes of individualism versus collectivism and regulation versus voluntarism, and map out the location of the key actors in this field. The contribution of this article is three-fold. First, we advance the understanding of the equality and diversity field at national level by analysing the accounts of the influential actors, whose interests and actions shape the field. Second, the article illustrates how the multi-actor and contested nature of the equality and diversity field manifests in these accounts, and presents evidence in support of policy and strategic thinking that goes beyond a single-actor focus. Finally, we contribute to the theoretical maturity and expansion of the equality and diversity scholarship through the use of Bourdieuan sociology.