Between Stabilizing and Dissolving Inequalities within Organizations: The Impact of Diversity Management Focusing on "Sexual Orientation"

Description

Under the umbrella of diversity management LGBTQI-issues are increasingly emerging on the agenda of economics and business. More and more, organizations and companies are starting to implement diversity-measures targeting the creation of an inclusive and supportive working climate for all employees, whatever sexual orientation or sexuality they have. In the German speaking countries there are seven concrete measures that organizations partially or fully implement when the decision is made to integrate sexual orientation into their overall diversity-programs. Until now there has been very little research done on measuring the effects of these concrete diversity-measures, and thus the research project this paper is based on tries to contribute to overcoming that gap, and questions how far these measures really help to ameliorate the working climate, and to what extent they reproduce heterosexual hegemonies and heteronormative organizational structures. The empirical basis is data taken from a cross sectional survey among gays and lesbians working in Germany. The sample contains data from 1412 employees, who define themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual. The working climate is measured by 20 items and the interrelation of the concrete measures and the climate is analyzed by a multi stage regression model. As a theoretical framework a Heideggerian approach is proposed. Workplace climates, as one (or more) partial publics that surround every working individual, can be described as processes of "leveling to averageness" alongside categories that are seen as relevant to allocate each person's organizational status. Heidegger (1927) describes these processes as the way the "dictatorship of the One" constitutes peoples everyday life. One result of the analysis is that the more a diversity measure helps to de-categorize sexual orientation as relevant factor of organizational status (and thus of organizational processes of leveling).

Period	6 Jul 2011 → 9 Jul 2011
Event title	VIII IASSCS Conference: Naming and Framing - The Making of Sexual (In)Equalities
Event type	Unknown
Degree of Recognition	International