Reconsidering Consultants' Strategic Use of the Business Case for Diversity

Author: Mease, Jennifer J.

Source: Journal of Applied Communication Research, Volume 40, Number 4, 1 November 2012 , pp. 384-402(19)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

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Abstract:

The business case for diversity-the practice of connecting human differences to an organization's bottom line-has been critiqued for its compromised treatment of human difference. Through a grounded in action discursive analysis of 19 interviews with diversity consultants, this research identifies three occupational demands that prompted consultants to use the business case: organizational access, motivation, and emotion work. The analysis also identifies strategies consultants used that met these demands without relying on the business case: connecting to mission statements, connecting to individual tasks, appealing to personal experience, sequencing, combining, balancing discourses of emotion and business, drawing on spiritual grounding, and using humor. By identifying these alternatives, this analysis seeks to decrease consultants' dependence on the business case when meeting occupational demands and consequently mitigate the negative effects that scholars have attributed to its common use and consequent discursive dominance in diversity work. Additionally, the conclusions suggest that diversity professionals and scholars might more explicitly use the notion of “discursive merger“ to advocate for social change in organizations.

Keywords: diversity; organizational communication; emotion work; tensional analysis; discourse analysis

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00909882.2012.720380

Publication date: 2012-11-01