The Face of the Firm: The Impact of Employer Branding on Diversity
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Author | Juliet E. Kele,Catherine M. Cassell |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12608 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 34, 692–708 (2023)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12608
The Face of the Firm: The Impact of
Employer Branding on Diversity
JulietE.Kele
1and Catherine M. Cassell2
1Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 8ST, UK 2Birmingham
Business School, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK
Corresponding author email: juliet.kele@northumbria.ac.uk
Drawing upon an employerbranding lens to help explore and inform our understanding of
the marketing of workforce diversity, here we argue that diversityis understood and used
in an aesthetic and commercialized way, rather than with a focus upon the inclusion of
disadvantaged groups.Our analysis of themarketing and diversity practices of four small
and medium-sized law rms demonstrates a continued access-and-legitimacy approach
to diversity: that a desire forsuccessful employer branding still supersedes organizational
commitment to equal opportunities and diversity management in practice. Weargue that
this commercialized approach leads to severalcontradictions, which in turn reproduce the
market-based perspective of diversity, relegating employees primarily to the aesthetics
of race and gender and the afliated skills and resources. In theorizing the processes by
which diversityis under mined and functions solely to enhance business image and increase
organizational performance, we highlight how an employer branding lens enables us to
identify and understand contradictions between diversitypolicy and practice in a different
way, by linking aesthetics with the marketing of the brand.
Introduction
In a bid to become an employer of choice, or-
ganizations recognize the need to embrace work-
force diversity as a competitive necessity (Byrd,
2018; Gallardo-Gallardo et al., 2015; Jonsen et al.,
2019). Since the remodelling of the recruitment
regulations discourses purported by equal oppor-
tunities (EO) into a broader view of diversity man-
agement practices as offering strategic organiza-
tional benets (Heres and Benschop, 2010; Tatli,
2011), proponents of this business case claim that
increased workplace diversity affords greater in-
novation (Dickens, 1999), boosted prots (Zanoni
et al., 2010) and business image (Byrd, 2018),
amongst other benets. Hence, organizations use
diversity initiatives in their branding to attracttal-
ented applicants and connect with customers (Av-
ery and McKay, 2006; Burgess, Wilkie and Dolan,
2021; Edwardsand Kelan, 2011; Windscheid et al.,
2018). In serving the interests of their consumers,
employees and stakeholders, the management and
production of diversity are crucial for a com-
pany’svalue proposition to showcase its favourable
employment offerings and organizational brand
(Backhaus and Tikoo, 2004; Pasztor, 2019).
Here, we propose that employer branding is a
productive way to theorize and understand the
representation of diversity in organizations. Re-
sponding to calls by Jonsen et al. (2019) to exam-
ine the incompatibility between employer brand-
ing and diversity management (Edwards and Ke-
lan, 2011), our ndings highlight the contradic-
tions of four law rms as to their use and manage-
ment of workforce diversity. Akin to work by Or-
tlieb and Sieben (2013), in the highly competitive
UK legal sector, the use of demographic diversity
is applied aesthetically by our case study rms for
impression management purposes, therefore solely
for commercial gain. The contribution of our re-
search, in applying an employer branding lens
to diversity management, is to show a sustained
A free video abstract to accompany this article can be found online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
E3_q1WSP-EI
© 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Management published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of BritishAcademy
of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main
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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distri-
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The Face of the Firm 693
access-and-legitimacy organizational approach to
diversity (Elyand Thomas, 2001). While outwardly
projecting an inclusive workplace through em-
ployer branding, the internal branding message of
these rms deviates fromthis. We demonstratehow
the commercialization of demographic diversity,
to extract its benets at face value, relegates em-
ployees to aesthetics and the afliated skills and
resources,and supersedes diversity management in
practice. Although scholars have highlighted sus-
picion around the business case for diversity and
the extent to which it can lead to progression for
disadvantaged groups, using an employer brand-
ing lens, we are able to highlight the distinctive
processes by whichdiversity becomes undermined,
commodied and functions solely to achieve com-
petitive advantage. Highlighting these processes
offers HR practitioners the opportunity to inter-
vene. We turn to the literature on the marketingof
workforce diversity and employer branding to po-
sition our work.
The marketing of workforce diversity
It is now well recognized that as organizations
planned how best to confront the demographic
changes within the workforce brought about by
globalization, mass migration (Tatli, 2011) and
increasing global competition, the original legal
and social justice EO project aimed at increasing
equality was overtaken by the value-in-diversity
approach and the pressurized attainment of orga-
nizational benets (Schwabenlandand Tomlinson,
2015). This business case altered the perception of
differences into strategic resources, which provide
tangible business outcomes and competitive ad-
vantage (Dickens, 1999; Gallardo-Gallardo et al.,
2015; Özbilgin and Tatli, 2011; Tomlinson and
Schwabenland, 2010). Although countless differ-
ences are conceptualized by diversity management
scholars (Jonsen et al., 2013; Zanoni et al., 2010),
practitioners and academics tend to focus on a few
diversity dimensions, usuallydemographic charac-
teristics, such as gender and race (Köllen, 2019),
rather than job-related diversity, such as knowl-
edge or experience. This is mirrored in organiza-
tional approaches: analysinghow companies lever-
age and frame diversity via the perspectives of dis-
crimination and fairness (aligned with EO), access
and legitimacy (aligned with the business case) and
integration and learning; the organizational learn-
ing and cultural growth that comes from incor-
porating employee insights about their work (Ely
and Thomas, 2001), revealing to what extent rms
perceive diversity as necessary to achieving busi-
ness goals (Janssens and Zanoni, 2005; Ortlieb and
Sieben, 2013). In the last decade in particular, for
both legal compliance and enhanced business im-
age, organizations have rapidly redesigned their
corporate communications to persuade the public
of their dedicated commitment to diversity and in-
clusion via updating their diversity rhetoric, modi-
fying mission statements and incorporating pho-
tographs of their diverse employees in their an-
nual reports,websites and other internal and exter-
nal communications (Burgess, Wilkie and Dolan,
2021; Pasztor, 2019). However, such actions have
been criticized as persuasive impression manage-
ment and strategically manufactured symbols of
corporate citizenship, used due to pressures to vis-
ibly respond to wider social and political issues
(Burgess, Wilkie and Dolan, 2021; Long, Doerer
and Stewart, 2015; Windscheid et al., 2018).
Indeed, it may be that an organization’s mar-
keting of diversity on their websites, and procla-
mation of their equality and diversity policies and
practices, is not an accurate and authentic depic-
tion of workforce diversity in the rm (Schwaben-
land and Tomlinson, 2015; Windscheid et al.,
2018). Moreover, the selling, telling and framing
of organizational diversity communications tends
to be strategically vague (Long, Doerer and Stew-
art, 2015). This discrepancy is also observed in re-
search on diversity statements on corporate web-
sites when compared with actual business practice
(Heres and Benschop, 2010; Jonsen et al., 2019;
Singh and Point, 2006).
Additionally problematic is that while creat-
ing the perception of a fair and accommodating
organizational culture, diversity branding strate-
gies lacking accountability for the social justice
case may camouageorganizational bias and other
negative behaviours that disadvantage marginal-
ized groups (Burgess, Wilkie and Dolan, 2021;
Byrd, 2018). By reducing diversity to demographic
organizational commodities (Swan, 2010), orga-
nizations only ascribe importance to the attrac-
tion of diverse groups, rather than creating a
more inclusive workplace where diverse employ-
ees can thrive (Köllen, 2019). As such, diversity
within the corporate environment acquires a cer-
tain sheen, providing organizations with moral
credibility (Byrd, 2018; Long, Doerer and Stewart,
© 2022 The Authors.British Journal of Managementpublished by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British
Academy of Management.
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