Suchergebnisse

The whaanau/support selection interview is a distinctively New Zealand example of bringing cultural diversity into organizations by changing human resource management (HRM) practices. Aims to advocate the possibilities of the whaanau/support process, to discuss its problems, and to suggest future research directions. Draws on the perspectives of HRM practitioners to present three case studies which analyse the use of the whaanau/support process in terms of specific organizational objectives.

The Equitable Public Servant: Regulating Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) in the New Zealand Public Service

PurposeThe authors use the debates instigated by Bernal'sBlack Athenato rethink the concepts of "race", "culture" and "diversity" in organization and aim to examine their intersection with academic authority.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the works of Derrida and Hegel, the authors question the pursuit of origins and illustrate its role in essentializing race, culture and diversity. The paper examines these through binaries including white/black, nature/culture, purity/diversity and diversity/university.FindingsFirst, both theBlack Athenadebates and the organizational literature turn to origins to ground concepts of difference. This attests to the power of narratives of descent in defining current interests. Second, organization studies have relied on images of a clear past which had eliminated racialization and its implications. Whereas culture is considered progressive, as a user‐friendly term it has served as a "surrogate" or "homologue" for race. Diversity, in turn, has been deployed both to harbour and to control difference in organization.Research limitations/implicationsTheBlack Athenadebates alert people to the authority of scholars and practitioners in normalising identity categories in organization. They challenge people to develop theories and practices of organizational diversity that are open to ongoing difference rather than essence and origin.Originality/valueDerrida's contribution has rarely been used in organizational history, particularly its implication with Hegel's legacy to the historical and cultural canon. The paper invites readers to rethink the notions of race, culture and diversity by examining their historical development and considering the history of their inclusion into the canons of management and organization. Historicising can unsettle entrenched assumptions, but the cautionary word is that it can also legitimate current practices by identifying their relevance since "the beginning".

A commitment to partnership between indigenous Māori and the nonindigenous Pākehā provides a process for bicultural organizing in Aotearoa New Zealand. The authors introduce this partnership process to provide perspectives for teaching and learning about "closer encounters" between indigenous and nonindigenous people. The bicultural model the authors present derives from a specific response to a history of colonization, in which the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) is central. Forms of biculturalism derived from this treaty seek to share governance and to include both indigenous and nonindigenous cultural practices and knowledges. It is shown how material about indigenous peoples and their relationships with others can be written into the management curriculum by presenting examples of bicultural organizing. A theoretical framework is proposed, which analyses organizations in terms of "race relations played out in power struggles" and which uses the concept of "whiteness" to show how all organizational members are involved in these struggles. The authors introduce the "power struggles" of bicultural organizing through a discussion of two nursing organizations as examples of a commitment to a bicultural partnership model. They suggest further pedagogical resources for studying bicultural organizing in terms of two themes: governance and interview practices. These resources encourage educators to explore the new perspectives that a bicultural model can bring to familiar organizational behavior topics.

PurposeThis paper theorises how equal employment opportunities (EEO) practitioners (EPs) operate as change agents within organisations.Design/methodology/approachIt takes a feminist and post‐structuralist perspective, in which EPs are seen as agents of positive social change, contesting existing discourses, but are also themselves subject to being changed by their engagement in those same discursive formations. The key example used is the way that EPs handle tensions between "business" and "social justice" agendas. A case study of EPs in New Zealand government organisations provides the empirical base.FindingsIt argues that agency is both produced and constrained by the discursive context of agents in specific situations. The case study showed EPs operating in an environment where the social justice discourse that had been central to introducing the concepts of EEO to the Public Service in the 1980s was in conflict with an increasingly powerful business agenda. This situation produced new "texts" and therefore new possibilities of agency. EPs struggled to define means and ends, and to handle the conflicts in ways that were coherent with their own concepts of ethics and politics. It argues that practitioners can act more effectively if they can find ways to reflect on their discursive locations. Research that draws out the contradictions in our positions, identities and language helps us do this.Research limitations/implicationsThe feminist post‐structuralist theoretical frame used in theorising this case can be used in any other empirical situations to understand how discursive practices operate to enable or constrain the work of change agents.Practical implications– It sets out to show how feminist and post‐structuralist approaches can be of practical value in supporting change agents by providing a framework for reflecting on their social and organisational context.Originality/valueIt combines a critical de‐naturalising stance, typical of writing in critical management studies, with the more action‐oriented agenda of most writing on equal opportunities.

Sensegiving constitutes a key process in the management of strategic change. Often this takes the form of narratives that provide a portrayal of events surrounding the change. This article reports the findings of research into the strategic change narratives that emerged in three organizations in which the senior management were seeking to respond to deregulation of the economy in which they were operating. The results illustrate both the existence of such narratives and the variation in form that they can take.

This introduction to the Special Issue on Parenting Adolescents in an Increasingly Diverse World explores how increasing population diversity may provide a context for changes in the parenting of adolescents. In this issue, authors (1) explore the context for asking questions about parenting adolescents and diversity, (2) consider parents, adolescents, and parenting in different diversity contexts, and (3) reflect on crosscutting themes. Two articles examine the parenting in an international context and within changing domestic demographics. Four articles focus on parenting adolescents in traditionally marginalized groups with the goal of identifying lessons for supporting all youth in navigating an increasingly diverse world. Finally, two articles synthesize these articles to suggest important directions for future research.