Minority Employees Engaging with (Diversity) Management: An Analysis of Control, Agency, and Micro‐Emancipation*

TLDR

Unlike most critical studies that focus on discursive control of minority employees, this study treats diversity management as a constellation of identity‑regulating discourses and bureaucratic controls. The study investigates how minority employees engage with control in organizations, assuming they actively resist or comply with the constellation of controls. Using qualitative data from a technical drawing company and a hospital, the authors reconstruct each organization’s control constellation and analyze four minority employee interviews. The interview analysis shows that engagement with material and discursive controls generates both constraints and opportunities for micro‑emancipation.

Abstract

abstract This study analyses how minority employees engage with control in organizations. Differently from most critical studies of diversity management, which focus on how minority employees are discursively controlled, we approach (diversity) management as a constellation of both identity‐regulating discourses and bureaucratic controls. We assume that minority employees are agents who actively resist and/or comply with the constellation of controls they are subject to. Based on qualitative data collected in a technical drawing company and a hospital, the specific constellation of controls in each organization is first reconstructed. Four interviews with minority employees are then analysed in depth, showing how their engagement with material and discursive controls creates both constraints and possibilities of micro‐emancipation.