1st Edition
Transcending Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Work A Self-Critical Engagement
The book reflects on ways of transcending Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) by establishing a dialogue between the professional experience of the authors and experts from academia and practitioners from financial services and executive search. The book emphasises the link and impact between what is taught and what is learned about EDI and how this reflects on later choices in career and workplace status. The book offers a critical and global perspective, emphasizing the multilocality and intersectionality dimension of diversity and unpicks key insights from different conceptualizations, like class, gender and postcolonialism and their relationship with the current paradigm of diversity and how people identify and communicate. With an extensive collection of testimonies and invitations for reflection, the book doesn’t limit the analysis to the influences of historical power relations in the workplace, but investigates at what stage multicultural power structures start developing a compulsory inclination to create “differences” and how this can influence hiring decision making and management in the workplace. In the book, academics and practitioners provide illumination and insights gleaned from their own personal experiences and perspectives. Whilst the research targeted financial services and executive search, the book's findings will appeal globally to individuals of all age groups regardless of educational status, seniority or in which industry they are employed, particularly those who are aware of how each one expresses similarity and differences sometimes in not obvious ways.
Introduction: Perspective on equality, diversity, and inclusion at work: questioning what is taken for granted
Chapter 1: ‘The Diversity Hiring Agenda’
Chapter 2: Difference: organizational understandings and practices
Chapter 3: Decolonizing Diversity? – Conceptions and Lexicon
Chapter 4: Identification → Equal Values? Empathy → Differences
Chapter 5: Diversity and Inclusion Regulations and Reporting Hypothesis
Chapter 6: Findings: “let” the actors speak but listen to them. Learning about ‘otherness’ and ‘difference’ and ‘classification’. What do the experts say?
Biography
Marguerite L Weber, MBA., CMgr MCMI., FREC, has worked in the U.K. and Australia with international recruitment mandates covering the Channel Islands; U.S.A; Europe; S.E. Asia; and the Middle East. In 2000, she co-founded Bevan Weber Associates (BWA), the first specialist alternative investment executive search firm run by women in the City of London, launching offices in Singapore. Her recruitment and executive search career has spanned over 30 years starting as operations support for the founders of the Michael Page Partnership. As well as Director of Operations for The Ton, an exclusive business introducing entrepreneurial investment ideas to private family offices around the world, Marguerite lectures part-time in Leadership and Organisation Studies at the University of West England’s Bristol Business School’s faculty of Business and Law. She has been project mentor for the Summer Enterprise Scholarships and sat on the judging panel of the "Dragon’s Den" style pitching for entrepreneurial students to secure funding from the University of West England and Santander Universities Accelerator fund.
Hugo Gaggiotti is Professor at the University of the West of England, UK. He has a PhD in Anthropology and a PhD in Management. He was a foreigner at birth and has remained displaced all his life. The focus of his writing is on the intersections between rhetoric, rituals, liminality and the symbolic construction of the meaning of work in mobile transnational workers. He conducted his fieldwork for many years in the borderlands industrial regions of Pindamonhangaba (Brazil), Ciudad Juarez (Mexico), Almaty (Kazakhstan), and currently in the US-Mexican borderlands of Baja California (British Council-Newton Fund Grant) and in UK (British Academy-Leverhulme).
"If you are from the Global South, like me, this is a book to read. It is clear that EDI is culturally constructed and in need of an open and down-top organizational way when it is discussed out of Eurocentric contexts. Weber and Gaggiotti navigate, using their sincere and open reflections, emotions and even contradictory organizational experiences, the EDI complexities embedded in societal structures, uncovering hidden and unspoken biases." Isis Arlene Díaz-Carrión, Facultad de Turismo y Mercadotecnia, Universidad Autónoma de Baja California
“'Diversity agenda' is a complex landscape within corporate environments when hiring candidates, as unconscious bias still remains in our way of understanding inclusion. This insightful book shows a deeper perspective of the issues that this agenda brings and reflects on the intersectionality dimension of identity and empathy in the workplace, giving a clear idea of the conceptual tools to 'dismantling systemic barriers to promoting a more just and inclusive workforce'. A must-read for anyone committed to fostering positive change and breaking down the barriers that impede the making of a truly equitable workplace." Mora Castro, School of Health Sciences at the Arturo Jauretche National University (UNAJ) – National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina
"The authors analyze diversity in financial services and executive search through their personal experiences and opinions, highlighting the neglect of "invisible" diversity in recruitment processes. This work challenges readers to explore the evolving perspectives and interpretations of diversity in society through an analysis of how memory and historical events influence our understanding of equality and diversity, as well as approaches to creating more equitable organizations." Prof. Dr. Burcu Guneri Cangarli, Izmir University of Economics
