Discourses of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion: Trenchant Formulations or Transient Fashions?
| Published date | 01 January 2014 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00830.x |
| Date | 01 January 2014 |
Discourses of Diversity, Equality and
Inclusion: Trenchant Formulations or
Transient Fashions?
Cliff Oswick and Mike Noon1
Cass Business School, City University, 106 Bunhill Row, London EC1Y 8TZ, UK, and 1Queen Mary,
University of London, Mile End, London E1 3NS, UK
Corresponding author email: m.a.noon@qmul.ac.uk
Using bibliometric analysis of published work, we examine the discursive trends, patterns
and implications of three different anti-discrimination solutions (equality, diversity and
inclusion) over a 40-year period from 1970 to 2010. The findings reveal that the
anti-discrimination discourses are consistent with management fashions, in terms of
both their trends and the rhetorical strategies used by proponents to establish the
dominance of their favoured approach, particularly by denigrating previous approaches.
Practitioner-facing academics play a key role in the process by giving shape, exposure
and credibility to the anti-discrimination solutions, but not in creating them. Only by
breaking free of the oppositional discursive patterns can the debate move on to anti-
discrimination solutions that attempt to blend together equality, diversity and inclusion.
Introduction
There has been an enduring, if not burgeoning,
interest in diversity, equality and inclusion in the
workplace over the past few decades (Edelman,
Fuller and Mara-Drita, 2001; Litvin, 1997; Page,
2007; Perriton, 2009; Zanoni and Janssens, 2007).
As part of their formation and development,
attempts have been made to define and classify
diversity, equality and inclusion as etymologically
different anti-discriminatory approaches. To this
end, equal opportunities initiatives have been dis-
tinguished from diversity management strategies
(Kandola, Fullerton and Ahmed, 1995; Liff,
1999) and, more recently, the concepts of inclu-
sion and diversity have been delineated (Bendick,
Egan and Lanier, 2010; Roberson, 2006; Shore
et al., 2011). Although we know a considerable
amount about the defining characteristics and the
general application of diversity, equality and
inclusion, insights into the ‘discursive production
and consumption’ (Fairclough, 1995) of these dif-
ferent approaches to tackling discrimination in
employment are limited. Hence, in this contribu-
tion, we seek to develop an understanding of the
nature of these discourses in terms of their take up
and popularity, their claims and narrative posi-
tioning, and their ‘interdiscursivity’ (i.e. the extent
to which they can be seen as being interconnected
and complementary or independent and compet-
ing discourses). The main purposes are to develop
an understanding of the way in which approaches
are formed, how they become popular, and
the processes of correspondence and transition
between them.
There are four main parts to the paper. First, we
review the management literature on diversity,
equality and inclusion and identify some recurring
themes and overarching patterns. Second, a meta-
level analysis is provided by considering citation
patterns and discursive trends within a large
We wish to thank Professor Stella Nkomo for her clear
guidance and incisive observations on the drafts of the
paper, and the anonymous reviewers for their rigorous
comments and constructive suggestions.
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British Journal of Management, Vol. 25, 23–39 (2014)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2012.00830.x
© 2012 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2012 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
sample of published work on diversity, equality
and inclusion contained in the Social Science Cita-
tion Index (SSCI). Third, using citation software
(Harzing, 2010) we explore the extent to which
the three anti-discrimination discourses form a
pattern which is comparable to that found within
the literature on management fashions (Abra-
hamson, 1996; Kieser, 1997). Finally, we discuss
the implications of treating anti-discrimination
approaches as substantively different discourses
(i.e. meaningful employment initiatives) or super-
ficially different discourses (i.e. rhetorically based
management fashions) and consider the implica-
tions for future anti-discrimination initiatives.
The construction and chronology of
diversity, equality and inclusion
Various anti-discrimination initiatives have
enjoyed a period of prominence at different points
in time over the past several decades, so in this
section we review the extant literature and draw
inferences regarding the discursive positioning of
equality, diversity and inclusion as distinctive and
temporally embedded approaches to addressing
aspects of under-representation and discrimina-
tion in the workplace. In particular we identify
factors that commentators have used to explain
the shift from equality to diversity, in order to
assess whether they might also apply to recent
changes in attention away from diversity towards
inclusion.
From equality to diversity
The rise in popularity of the concept of diversity
in the practitioner press has been charted by Kelly
and Dobbin (1998) and Edelman, Fuller and
Mara-Drita (2001) using keyword searches in the
ABI/INFORM database covering a period from
the early 1970s until 1996. The pattern in both
studies reveals that little was written about the
concept prior to 1987, but from that year there
was a steep rise in the frequency of practitioner
journal papers referring to the concept, with a
peak in 1993 and a steady decline during the sub-
sequent three years. Both studies note that the
take-up of the concept coincided with the publi-
cation of the Workforce 2000 report (Johnston
and Packer, 1987), which predicted massive
demographic change requiring organizations to
rethink their hiring strategies in order to survive;
of particular concern was the startling prediction
that by 2000 only 15% of new entrants to the US
workforce would be US-born white males.
Edelman, Fuller and Mara-Drita (2001) point out
that the predictions were subsequently proved
by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to be wrong
because they were based on a conceptual misun-
derstanding by the report’s authors (see Friedman
and Di Tomaso, 1996), but the impact had
already occurred as ‘the professional management
literature picked up that (largely erroneous)
threat and made it into a full-blown crisis with
rhetoric that justified and necessitated a major
change in management style’ (Edelman, Fuller
and Mara-Drita, 2001, p. 1614).
The studies also draw attention to the role
of consultants in articulating an appropriate
response to meet the needs of the demographic
and competitive challenge. A key example is
Thomas (1990) who suggests that affirmative
action (AA) had run its course and needed to be
replaced with managing diversity – a term he is
attributed with coining in the early 1980s (Kelly
and Dobbin, 1998, p. 973). His argument is that
AA has been successful in securing entry into
organizations for women and ethnic minorities,
but they are not being developed and are not pro-
gressing through the hierarchy; consequently
organizations are missing out on a talent pool
essential to remain competitive. Subsequent to
Thomas’s call, other prescriptions for managing
diversity began to appear (e.g. Kandola and Full-
erton, 1994; Ross and Schneider, 1992; Thomas
and Ely, 1996). Moreover, there is evidence to
suggest this transferred into management teach-
ing. Litvin’s (1997) analysis of organizational
behaviour textbooks from the early 1990s shows
the tendency to problematize difference and then
offer diversity management as a solution. She
concludes that the solution being promulgated in
these texts (valuing differences) depends upon
essentialist assumptions about the importance of
demographic characteristics in driving and
explaining behaviour and an understatement of
alternative socio-economic explanations.
It can be argued that the diversity exponents
were tapping into a mood change in both political
and public opinion that increasingly sought non-
interventionist approaches from the government
in the USA and the UK (Jewson and Mason,
24 C. Oswick and M. Noon
© 2012 The Author(s)
British Journal of Management © 2012 British Academy of Management.
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