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1997 4: 187OrganizationDeborah R. Litvin

The Discourse of Diversity: From Biology to Management  

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The Discourse of Diversity:

Volume 4(2): 187-209 Copyright© 1997 SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks

and New Delhi)

From Biology to Management

Deborah R. Litvin University of Massachusetts

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Abstract. By tracing the origins of workforce diversity discourse to the domain of natural science and philosophy, and analyzing two other contemporary diversity discourses, biodiversity and the Human Genome Diversity Project, this paper reveals the essentialist assumptions upon which contemporary diversity discourse is based. It demonstrates how these essentialist assumptions structure the conceptualizations of work­force diversity presented in a sample of recently published organizational behavior textbooks. The organizational consequences of the adoption of this essentialized conceptualization of diversity are explored, and a suggestion for an alternative conceptualization of difference is offered.

This article analyzes the discourse of workforce diversity, and reveals the assumptions about the nature of cultural, gender and other differences among individuals embedded in this discourse. Diversity discourse, as analyzed in organizational behavior texts, constructs differences among individuals as primarily a group phenomenon. The acquisition of knowl­edge about groups exotically, essentially and immutably different from one's own is prescribed as an effective strategy for managing diversity. The assumptions and meanings upon which workforce diversity discourse is built extend deep into the traditions of western philosophy and natural science.

Diversity and its definition did not originate in the vocabulary of management, but was adopted into it already pregnant with meanings that can be traced to other diversity discourses. The birthplace of diversity

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discourse in western tradition lies in the realm of natural science and philosophy, beginning with Platonic essentialism, reinforced and sys­tematized through the work of 18th-century taxonomists such as Carolus Linnaeus. The emphasis had been on delineating categories of organisms based on observed similarities, on identifying species and subspecies and on constructing organizational hierarchies structuring the relationships among the various species the naturalist observed. More recently, the focus among biologists and ecologists on diversity at the species level has been sharpened by the evidence of widespread tropical rainforest destruc­tion, species extinction and the resultant threat to the biological diversity or biodiversity of our planet. The meaning(s) of human diversity in particular have been examined and influenced by the geneticists and anthropologists of the Human Genome Diversity Project. These research­ers seek to ascertain DNA variations among individuals sampled from distinct 'populations' around the world in order to reveal the 'history and origins of peoples' (Cavalli-Sforza, 1994).

With its adoption of diversity, managerial discourse has unreflectively incorporated essentialist ontological assumptions from the realm of natu­ral science. The purpose of this article is to inspect these assumptions in order to answer a number of questions. What is the nature of the workforce diversity produced through this discourse? How is workforce diversity to be defined and identified? What are the carryover effects of the importation of diversity from a bio-physical to a social-political environment? And finally, what are the personal and organizational consequences of the adoption of this diversity discourse into the workplace?

Diversity and Management Discourse Diversity is a hot topic in US management circles. Since the publication of Workforce 2000 (Johnston and Packer, 1987) considerable attention has been paid to the increasing demographic complexity of the American workforce and its implications for the effective management of organiz­ations. The Workforce 2000 report predicted a significant shift in the demographic makeup of the US workforce. The proportion of 'traditional' white male entrants into the US workforce was predicted to fall, while the proportion of specific groups of non-white men, particularly Hispanics and Asian-Americans, as well as women of all colors, was expected to rise. The question of how to manage diversity arose among management practitioners in the wake of these predictions (Nkomo and Cox, 1996). Although other terms have been used (e.g. multicultural workforce) most of those who contribute to management literature seem to have settled upon diversity in the workplace or the diverse workforce as the accepted terminology for referring to this demographic complexity. Much has been written by management practitioners about managing diversity (Thomas, 1990, 1991; Loden and Rosener, 1991; Nelton, 1992; Carnevale and Stone, 1994). R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr, president of the American Institute for

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Managing Diversity at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, defines managing diversity as learning to cope with

... unassimilated differences. It's about managing people who aren't like you and who don't necessarily aspire to be like you .... It's taking differences into account while developing a cohesive whole .... The goal is an organization that is able to function as productively with heterogeneous workers as it once did with homogeneous ones. (Thomas in Gordon, 1992: 23, 29)

In response to this 'new' workforce heterogeneity, executives of numerous corporations and institutions have pursued diversity initiatives and imple­mented diversity training. This training usually consists of 'sensitivity' exercises intended to uncover participants' own stereotypes and biases often followed by 'awareness' exercises to re-educate trainees, replacing their previously held (negative) stereotypes with new and correct informa­tion about defined demographic groups they are likely to encounter in the workforce. Such training is advocated as a key component of an organiz­ation's efforts to successfully manage diversity in order to convert what had been characterized as a liability, workforce heterogeneity, into a globally competitive asset, the diversity advantage. As Fernandez argues:

The United States has by far the most diverse population in terms of race, ethnicity, religions and culture; however, the global marketplace is even more diverse in all of these areas .... [We] put forward the thesis that despite the problems with diversity experienced by the United States, it is uniquely positioned ... to grasp the competitive advantage .... We maintain that U.S. success in the new global marketplace rests in the rich cultural, ethnic, and racial mix of its population, which will make it better able to adapt to foreign markets and global customer bases. (Fernandez, 1993: 1, 2)

Managing diversity, then, has been accepted as an important and power­ful management tool to harness the energies of all organizational members for service in the global battle for organizational success.

Diversity and Textbooks The all-pervasive acceptance of diversity into the mainstream of manage­ment discourse and practice is demonstrated by its inclusion in recently published textbooks intended for undergraduate students of management and organizational behavior. 'New this edition' chapters such as 'Manag­ing the Diverse Workforce' (Bateman and Zeithaml, 1993) and 'Managing Diversity in Organizations' (Moorhead and Griffin, 1995) signal this acceptance. Other authors highlight the salience of this phenomenon with features such as 'Diversity Encounters' or 'Spotlights on Diversity' incor­porated throughout their texts, along with experiential exercises and cases focusing on issues of diversity.

The incorporation of diversity into these textbooks is significant, as it trumpets the arrival of diversity as part of the accepted canon of 'knowl­edge' in the fields of management and organizational behavior. The role of textbooks as disseminators of the dominant line has long been noted.

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Kuhn (1970) depicts the textbook as an 'exemplar' that supports the process of 'normal', dominant paradigm inquiry. Textbooks socialize students into accepting the currently dominant theories, define the legitimacy of topic areas and mirror the field's research priorities (Rider, 1984; Feiner and Roberts, 1990). The absence of race and ethnicity from this definition of 'legitimate topic areas' (with the exception of discus­sions of equal rights legislation and affirmative action policies) has been noted and criticized (Bell, 1989; Nkomo, 1992). The recent inclusion of diversity within management and organizational behavior (OB) texts could thus be applauded as a long overdue corrective: the consideration of race and ethnicity in the development of organizational theory. How­ever, Nkomo and Cox (1996: 338) have cautioned that diversity has gained its present meaning largely from the work of organizational practitioners, and that 'for the most part the concept of diversity lacks rigor, theoretical development, and historical specificity'. In this context, it is necessary to examine the nature of this 'corrective' to the organizational literature.

Method To examine the assumptions underlying the management discourse of diversity, this paper traces the meanings and implications of diversity back to their historic roots in the natural sciences, and forward through the contemporary studies of ecological biodiversity and human genetic diversity. The history of diversity in biological thought forms a platform from which to examine two texts which exemplify contemporary usages of diversity. 'Biodiversity', a section of World Resources 1994-95, a report by the World Resources Institute (1994) in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Devel­opment Programme, was chosen as it provides an internationally sanc­tioned overview of current concerns about biodiversity. The Human Genome Diversity Project was selected because it is a comprehensive outline of the project by Luca Cavalli-Sforza (1994), chair of its Inter­national Executive Committee.

Reading and analysis of these texts is guided by a concern to under­stand how the particular definitions of diversity the authors assume shape their constructions of 'reality'. The same concern will then guide the analysis of workforce diversity as presented in a sample of recently published organizational behavior textbooks. These texts were chosen because they are a sample of 'mainstream' OB texts, targeted at instructors of undergraduate courses by the provision of free 'desk copies', and thus represent the choices readily available to those instructors.

Natural Science and the Origin of Diversity Diversity plays a prominent role in the history of western biological thought. 1 The variety of flora and fauna surrounding them generated

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much curiosity and speculation among natural philosophers in western tradition at least as far back as Plato. His conception of the diversity of species, which continued to dominate western thinking for more than 2000 years, was characterized by essentialism. Plato conceived of the variability he observed in the natural world as reflecting a limited number of fixed and unchanging forms or essences which, as ideas, existed independently of any objects. Constancy of essence, bridgeless dis­continuity of species and typical values ('typology') are points of empha­sis in the essentialist conception of species diversity. The presence of the same essence is inferred on the basis of observed similarity.

Species ... were simply defined as groups of similar individuals that are different from individuals belonging to other species. Species, thus conceived, represent different 'types' of organisms. (Mayr, 1982: 256)

Essentialism, according to Mayr, 'dominated the thinking of the western world to a degree that is still not yet fully appreciated by the historians of ideas' (1982: 38).

The dominant position of essentialist thinking up to the 19th-century was strongly buttressed by the scientific revolution and Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, during which belief in the existence of univer­sal laws governing the physical world and in scientists' ability to discover those universal laws came to the forefront of intellectual prominence, indeed came to literally define science. This pursuit and formulation of universal laws in mechanics and physics led students of the organic world to seek similar universal explanations for the diversity of life they encoun­tered. For the physical scientists, whose 'classes' consisted of identical entities, such as chemical substances, the philosophy of essentialism fitted quite well. However, the teeming diversity of living things seemed unyielding to the discovery of laws. Explorers brought back a wealth of exotic plants and animals from newly discovered regions of the world. In the attempt to order this untidy diversity and thereby discover the univer­sal laws that, according to 'scientific' thinking, must have existed, organ­isms were examined and grouped according to their observable similarities (Kraus, 1996). Taxonomy and classification schemes became the obses­sion.2 'So important seemed this ordering procedure to the zoologists and botanists in the eighteenth century that classification was treated as almost synonymous with science' (Mayr, 1982: 142).

This concern with classification schemes extended to attempts to delin­eate 'natural' categories-subspecies or races-of humans. For example, in the influential 10th edition of his System of Nature (1758) Carolus Linnaeus offered a 'scientific' classificatory scheme which identified four 'normal' geographical subspecies (Americanus, Europaeus, Asiaticus and Afer) and a fifth 'abnormal' subspecies, Homo sapiens monstrosus, to contain various groups ofremote, deformed or imaginary humans, such as the cone-heads of China and the Flatheads of Canada (Marks, 1995: 50). Linnaeus defined each subspecies by its appearance and personality.

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Homo sapiens americanus was: 'red, ill-tempered, subjugated. Hair black, straight, thick; Nostrils wide; Face harsh, Beard scanty. Obstinate, con­tented, free. Paints himself with red lines. Ruled by custom.' Homo sapiens europaeus, by contrast, was 'white, serious, strong. Hair blond, flowing. Eyes blue. Active, very smart, inventive. Covered by tight clothing. Ruled by laws.' (Linneaus in Marks, 1995: 50)

Such descriptions make clear that not only perceived similarities in selected physical characteristics but also value judgments about similar­ities in personality, dress and customs were being used to create cate­gories among humans. A contemporary of Linnaeus, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, remarked on the continuous rather than discrete nature of human variation in his On the Natural Variations in Humankind (1775). In a disclaimer that echoes resoundingly in our own time, he declared that 'one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them' (Marks, 1995: 54). He then proceeded to do just that, dividing humankind into four geographical categories and then, in later editions (1781, 1795) into five varieties of humans which he named Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American and Malay, each portrayed through a stereotypical, physical description. The quest for the best classification scheme to subdivide the human species remained central to the science of physical anthropology for another two centuries (Marks, 1995: 52). The Platonic/Linnaean essential­ist paradigm allowed for no other approach to biological diversity.

But essentialism and classification schemes were of little or no help in accounting for the diversity naturalists encountered at the level of the individual organism, human or ant. According to the essentialist philoso­phy, average or 'typical' values determined the norm, the 'essence'. Variation was explained as 'errors' around the mean values. However, by the middle of the 19th century, practicing naturalists had observed that whenever they collected a series of specimens which they believed to be a single species, no two specimens were ever completely alike. Wollaston wrote in 1860:

... amongst the millions of people who have been born into the world, we are certain that no two have ever been precisely alike in every respect; and in a similar manner it is not too much to affirm the same of all living creatures (however alike some of them may seem to our uneducated eyes) that have ever existed. (Mayr, 1982: 46)

This uniqueness was observed to be true not only on the level of individuals, but also for stages in the organism's life-cycle as well as for aggregations of individuals into species, or larger groupings. The even­tually undeniable uniqueness of biological individuals led to a revolution in thinking among biologists, a turn from essentialism to 'population thinking' (Mayr, 1982: 47).

Population thinking stresses the uniqueness of everything in the organic world, and the importance of the individual, not the type. There is

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believed to exist no 'typical' individual, and mean values are merely abstractions. 'The differences between biological individuals are real, while the mean values which we may calculate in the comparison of groups of individuals (species, for example) are man-made inferences' (Mayr, 1982: 47). Variation, rather than being error, is seen as a basic characteristic of living things. Diversity is the dominant characteristic of life at all levels of analysis. Population thinking, with its emphasis on diversity and individual uniqueness, made it possible for Darwin to conceive of one of his most significant and influential ideas, the principle of natural selection: 'the differential reproduction of individuals that differ uniquely in their adaptive superiority' (Mayr, 1982: 57).

In the century since Darwin, his theory of evolution by natural selection has been accepted by most biologists as fact. Population thinking, the set of assumptions underpinning natural selection with its emphasis on individual uniqueness, has prevailed, to become the dominant paradigm of modern biological thought and the biological context within which to understand the diversity of life. Essentialism, by contrast, has slipped from its 2000-year reign as the accepted biological principle governing the observed diversity of the organic world. The Linnaean approach to the study of human diversity, the numbering and naming of human groups, has given way to an approach that examines human variation as a process of local adaptation, that describes patterns of variation across the species and that studies diversity within populations (Marks, 1995: 58).

Choice among the available perspectives on diversity, between one rooted in taxonomic essentialism and variation as error, and one based on the uniqueness of individuals and variation as necessary to survival, continues to be critical to the conception and implementation of contem­porary scientific initiatives. We shall see how the struggle between essentialism and population thinking, supposedly decided (at least in the biological sciences) a century ago, has reappeared in contemporary diversity discourses. The first of these is the ecological discourse of biodiversity.

Biodiversity: It's in the Rainforest

The contemporary discourse of biodiversity refers to concerns about the catastrophic effects of humans who encroach upon, pollute and otherwise destroy non-human life forms and their habitats. E.O. Wilson, a principal architect of biological diversity theory, argues for the vital need to stem this destruction, as 'biological diversity ... is the key to the maintenance of the world as we know it ... It holds the world steady' (1992: 15). The issue is presented clearly in the World Resources report.

By some accounts, the world is on the verge of an epidemic of major species extinction, rivaling five other documented periods over the past half billion years during which a significant portion of global fauna and flora were wiped

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out ... experts say the current episode is driven by anthropogenic factors: the rapid conversion and degradation of habitat for human use; the accidental and deliberate introduction of exotic species; overharvesting of animals, fish, and plants; pollution; human-caused global climate change; industrial agriculture and forestry; and other activities that destroy or impair natural ecosystems and the species within them ... If their warnings prove true, the effect of human activities on biodiversity-the variation of genes within a species and the overall diversity of species, communities, and ecosystems-will be irreparable if continued unchecked, within the time frame of subsequent generations, and perhaps within the lifetime of the human race itself. (World Resources Institute, 1994: 147)

Biodiversity discourse is permeated by issues of power, both political and economic. Since scientists agree that 40-90 percent of the world's biolog­ical species live in tropical forests (World Resources Institute, 1994: 148) these areas have become the principal foci of biodiversity discourse as well as the battleground of divergent interests. 'Gene-prospecting' multinational pharmaceutical and other corporations, governments of developing coun­tries and local indigenous peoples whose livelihoods depend on their access to natural resources find their interests in conflict. 3 The Convention on Biological Diversity, signed in 1992 by 158 governments attending the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), reflects the political and economic struggles inherent in the international push to stem biodiversity loss. The Convention sets forth the commitments of each of the signatories to conserve biodiversity and promote its sustain­able use. It also addresses issues of implementation, including financial relationships, legal mechanisms and jurisdiction (World Resources Insti­tute, 1994). Within the space thus defined, corporate, national and local indigenous interests compete to enjoy the current and future financial benefits to be derived from endangered natural resources, while simultane­ously attempting to preserve those resources from eradication.

The Construction of Biodiversity The World Resources report notes that scientists define several levels of biological diversity. Genetic diversity refers to the variation between individuals, as well as between populations within a species. Species diversity is the number of different types of animals, plants and other organisms within a region, and community or ecosystem diversity is the variety of types of habitat within a geographic area. However, after stating that each of these levels of diversity is important and of practical value, the authors of World Resources drop any discussion of levels of bio­diversity other than species diversity, and treat biodiversity and species diversity as synonymous. Biodiversity loss is equated with species extinc­tion . This emphasis on the species diversity level has structured a world in which identifying and counting species is of great importance and the latest tally is the determinant of 'how we're doing'. This emphasis on counting species tends to reinforce the essentialism of Linnaean classifi-

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cation and the tendency to view all members of a class or species as homogeneous, eclipsing the key role of individual variation in the processes of evolution and survival.

Pursuing this emphasis on species diversity, World Resources notes that best guesses put the total count of species between 3 and 30 million, of which only about 1.8 million have been identified. Most of the undis­covered species, as well as the bulk of those already identified and classi­fied by biologists, are thought to inhabit tropical regions. Scientists concede the difficulties inherent in a world-wide conservation effort, and so have selected 18 'hot spots', areas particularly rich in species diversity or where many species with limited ranges live, upon which to focus their bio­diversity conservation efforts. Of the 18 hot spots targeted for conservation efforts, 14 are located in tropical forests (World Resources Institute, 1994: 148). Through this identification of hot spots, the discourse of biodiversity focuses attention on remote, tropical, and-from the viewpoint of the inhabitants of most ofthe world's 'developed' regions-exotic portions of the globe. 'Save the rainforest' becomes, perhaps, the most fashionable and familiar rallying cry in the struggle to preserve the world's biodiversity.

With the discursive location of biodiversity in distant, exotic places, its existence-and threats to its existence-in nearer, familiar and mundane environments tends to be downplayed. In World Resources biodiversity is construed as the number of tropical bird species found in a particular valley of New Guinea, not the number of bird species visiting one's own backyard feeder in Liverpool or Boston. Media reports publicize the burning of Amazonian forests and loudly condemn the resultant destruc­tion of biodiversity, shifting public attention away from local activities, such as the indiscriminate use of lawn chemicals, both by agribusiness and homeowners, and the resultant destruction of insect and bird species (Ridley, 1995). Biodiversity becomes a characteristic of faraway, exotic and steamy jungles-or of the depths of the world's great oceans­removed in time and space from the average, everyday life experience of the financial contributors to Greenpeace or the World Wildlife Fund. Biodiversity exists somewhere else, far from one's own front lawn.

Biodiversity is thus constructed as the preservation from extinction of exotic, tropical species. Similarly, the Human Genome Diversity Project can be shown to display a comparable concern with exotic, tropical 'species'.

The Human Genome Diversity Project: Who's a 'Population'? The Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) is an 'international anthro­pology project that seeks to study the genetic richness of the entire human species. . .. The Project will deepen our understanding of this genetic richness and show both humanity's diversity and its deep and underlying unity' (Cavalli-Sforza,1994: 1). Human DNA will be collected and made available for scientific purposes, including the study of the history and

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origins of people, and the study of inherited diseases and sensitivities. In order to accomplish these objectives researchers intend to analyze DNA derived from samples of blood, other biological fluids or hair specimens from individuals chosen to represent the genetic diversity of the world. The HGDP grows out of (and has been termed a 'modification to') the larger Human Genome Project, whose goal is the mapping of the human genome, disregarding variation (Marks, 1995).

A major planning issue which HGDP researchers had to resolve was the 'question of scientific feasibility and sampling' and 'which coverage of the world's genetic variation was most appropriate'. One proposed sampling scheme called for the taking of single individuals located at regular geographic distance from one another: sampling the world's diversity by superimposing a grid (similar to lines of latitude and longitude) to ensure uniform coverage. This idea was not supported because of the practical difficulties inherent in its implementation. The alternative, accepted sampling plan involves selecting '400-500 "populations", a term indicat­ing ethnic groups defined by a self-selected name, chosen by some criteria that would make them representative of the world's population' (Cavalli­Sforza, 1994: 4). Between 10,000 and 100,000 individuals in total are to be sampled, up to 200 persons from each defined population.

In deciding upon the most appropriate coverage of the world's genetic variation, the HGDP planners began by choosing populations that were considered of 'special interest' by anthropologists, and then expanded their choices to include 'all ethnic groups who declare an interest in our work'. Finally, the planners instructed the regional committees that had been set up to administer the project to choose samples from populations that met at least one of six criteria. Of these, five refer to cultural characteristics of the populations, including their ability to 'answer specific questions concerning ... the genetic composition of contempo­rary "ethnic groups", language groups, and cultures'. Additional criteria specify that the populations be 'anthropologically unique, exhibiting cultural or linguistic attributes that distinguish them from most or all others', that they be 'in danger of losing their identity as genetic, cultural, or linguistic units', that they be 'geographically, linguistically, culturally, or historically related' to populations that do meet the other stated criteria, or that they represent 'regions, language groups or cultural types that have not otherwise been sampled'. Additionally, researchers are to select populations 'that might be especially informative in identifying the genetic etiology of important diseases' (Cavalli-Sforza, 1994: 12).

The Construction of Human Genetic Diversity For the researchers of the HGDP, diversity is defined as variation in the human genome. They intend to search for diversity by sampling the bodily fluids and hair of members of specifically delineated, selected populations. 'Populations' are defined as 'ethnic groups defined by a self­selected name' (Cavalli-Sforza, 1994: 4).

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By sampling from 'populations' of self-defined ethnic groups, the HGDP researchers simultaneously have solved a problem of methodology and created one of ontology. A biological 'population', rather than being an easily definable natural fact, is only a heuristic device, a construct, both contested and pliable, which has been created to assist in the exploration of specific questions (Lock, 1994). By choosing to sample from cultural­linguistic groups rather than following the (impracticable) geographic grid sampling plan, these cultural-linguistic groups are reified as the lines of demarcation defining genetic diversity. This reification of differences between cultural-linguistic groups is further solidified by excluding any marginal or hybrid individuals from the sampling procedure. In addition, populations of particular interest to the HGDP are those that are 'anthro­pologically unique' or are 'in danger of losing their identity as genetic, cultural, or linguistic units'. These 'anthropologically unique' and endan­gered populations are clearly to be found in exotic and remote areas of the globe where they have remained, presumably unaffected by 'the vagaries of history, of contact, and of gene flow' for centuries, frozen in time (Marks, 1995: 176).

This interest in the pure, the real, the essential genetic identity of specific, isolated, ethnic groups as unique and different one from another seems very close to racialism, or scientific racism, which is defined as 'the belief that humans are divisible into a finite number of types (races) and that individual biology and behavior are explicable by race' (Goodman, 1994: 3). Racialist beliefs are in fundamental contradiction to some of modern biology's most demonstrable tenets about human variation.

First, variation is non-concordant. This means that variation in any one human trait, such as blood type, is a very poor predictor of most other human traits, such as skin color, height or eye color. Non-concordance also points to the arbitrary nature of the selection of skin color as the basis for classification of humans. Equally (in)valid would be 'racial classifica­tion' on the basis of other traits. For example, by defining races according to the presence or absence of anti-malarial genes, Swedes, who do not possess the gene, would be grouped with Xhosas of South Africa, but not with Italians or Greeks. Most other African 'blacks' would be grouped with Arabia's 'whites' (Diamond, 1994). Second, human variation is continuous, so that where one group or 'population' begins and another ends is arbitrary. Third, for any defined 'population' there is a much greater range of genetic variability within the population than between it and other populations (Goodman, 1994).

Human diversity, as constructed through the discourse of the Human Genome Diversity Project, is variation in the human genome. However, the criteria by which populations are to be selected for sampling are chiefly cultural. Variation in the human genome is identified with membership in particular homogeneous cultural-linguistic groups, which are thus portrayed as innately and essentially different one from another. Exotic groups that are determined to be 'anthropologically unique' or 'in

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danger of losing their identity' according to cultural-linguistic criteria are especially notable repositories of human genetic diversity.

Finally, we turn to another discourse pertaining to diversity among humans, that of workforce diversity. We see how the construction of diversity as a characteristic of homogeneous, essentialized, often exotic cultural-linguistic groups is accomplished in organizational behavior textbooks.

Workforce Diversity in OB Texts As noted above, many of the recent editions of undergraduate OB and management textbooks have added new chapters on managing diversity, or else have incorporated material on diversity into various chapters of the text, often through the use of exercises, sidebar 'Diversity Encounters', 'Diversity Highlights', or 'Spotlights on Diversity.' Managing diversity, a 'growing managerial challenge' (Moorhead and Griffin, 1995: 519), is described as 'adapting to people who are different' (Robbins, 1996: 16) and 'managing the differences among people in organizations' (Moorhead and Griffin, 1995: 519). 'The increasing heterogeneity of the workforce ... has its advantages and disadvantages, and organizations will have to develop strategies for coping with this new workforce' (Northcraft and Neale, 1994: 640). Robbins explains:

The challenge for organizations ... is to make themselves more accommodating to diverse groups of people by addressing their different lifestyles, family needs, and work styles. The melting pot assumption is being replaced by one that recognizes and values differences .... Managers will need to shift their philoso­phy from treating everyone alike to recognizing differences and responding to those differences in ways that will ensure employee retention and greater pro­ductivity-while at the same time not discriminating. (Robbins, 1996: 15, 16)

Several themes unite these texts' definitions of managing diversity. First, the heterogeneity of the workforce is presented as something new, different from the presumed homogeneity of the US workforce of the past. Second, this heterogeneity is characterized as a problem or 'challenge' with which organizations must learn to 'cope' through developing innovative 'strate­gies', and third, the emphasis in managing diversity is to shift from 'treating everyone alike' to recognizing and responding to differences. Given the traditional portrayal of the US as a 'Nation of Immigrants', however, one could argue that its workforce demographics have always been complex, and that organizations have always had to develop strategies to accom­modate newcomers of varying backgrounds. What, then, are the character­istics of this new and different diversity, and how is it constructed?

The Construction of Workforce Diversity In the OB texts examined (Bateman and Zeithaml, 1993; Northcraft and Neale, 1994; Moorhead and Griffin, 1995; lvancevich and Matteson, 1996;

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Robbins, 1996), diversity is defined in terms of demographic differences, including age, gender, religion, educational background, ethnic heritage, physical ability/disability, race and sexual orientation, that make up the employees of organizations. Table 1 shows the definitions of diversity offered in each of these texts.

In several of the texts the dimensions/factors of diversity are divided into two categories, primary or core diversity dimensions and secondary or other diversity dimensions. The texts generally state that there are six

Table 1. Textbook Definitions of 'Diversity'

Moorhead and Griffin, Organizational Behavior: Managing People and Organizations (1995)

Northcraft and Neale, Organizational Behavior: A Management Challenge (1994, 2nd edn.)

Bateman and Zeithaml, Management: Function and Strategy (1993, 2nd edn.)

Robbins, Organizational Behavior: Concepts, Controversies, Applications, 7th edn (1996)

lvancevich and Matteson, Organizational Behavior and Management, 4th edn (1996)

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Workforce diversity is the differences, such as in age, gender, ethnic heritage, physical ability/disability, race and sexual orientation, that make up the employees of organizations (p. 520)

Diversity is often used as a buzzword for racial, ethnic, and gender differences among employees (p. 637)

Today diversity refers to far more than skin color and gender. It is a broad term used to refer to all kinds of differences ... [which) include religious affiliation, age, disability status, military experience, sexual orientation, economic class, educational level, and lifestyle in addition to gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality (p. 377)

Work force diversity (definition in margin): the increasing heterogeneity of organizations with the inclusion of different groups (p. 15) Work force diversity means that organizations are becoming more heterogeneous in terms of gender, race and ethnicity. But the term encompasses anyone who varies from the so-called norm. In addition to the more obvious groups­women, African-Americans, Hispanic­Americans, Asian-Americans-it also includes the physically disabled, gays and lesbians, and the elderly (p. 15)

Diversity is the vast array of physical and cultural differences that constitute the spectrum of human differences (p. 98)

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primary dimensions of diversity: age, ethnicity, gender, physical attri­butes/abilities, race and sexual orientation. These dimensions are descri­bed as having 'a lifelong impact on behavior and attitudes' (Ivancevich and Matteson: 1996: 98), as being 'immutable differences' (Northcraft and Neale, 1994: 637) and as 'factors that make up the essence of who we are as human beings' (Moorhead and Griffin, 1995: 526). Primary dimensions of diversity include 'those factors that either are inborn or exert extraordi­nary influence on early socialization' (Moorhead and Griffin, 1995: 526).

In contrast, secondary diversity dimensions are those that 'can be changed. These are differences that people acquire, discard or modify throughout their lives' (Ivancevich and Matteson, 1996: 98), 'those aspects of the employee that he or she has some control over' (Northcraft and Neale, 1994: 637). Secondary diversity dimensions 'include factors that are important to us as individuals and to some extent define us to others but are less permanent and can be adapted or changed: educational background, geographic location, income, marital status, military experi­ence, parental status, religious beliefs, and work experience' (Moorhead and Griffin, 1995: 531).

There are three basic aspects to the structuring of 'reality' accomplished by these definitions. First, the nature of diversity is presented as discrete rather than continuous, as all discussion is of 'groups', such as 'the elderly', 'African-Americans' and 'gays and lesbians', portrayed as separate, homo­geneous entities. Talk of differences at an individual level is generally confined to brief disclaimers, such as 'An increasingly important goal in a changing society is to understand that all individuals are different and to appreciate these differences' (Ivancevich and Matteson, 1996: 98). The very next sentence turns to the main point, that the way to understand differ­ences is by group: 'Encounter 2-2 offers a few diversity questions that may give you some idea about how much you know or do not know about other races, ethnic groups, and religions' (Ivancevich and Matteson, 1996: 98).

In this 'Diversity Encounter', which is entitled 'Learning About Diver­sity', the authors' intent is to 'simply list a number of points that students, managers, and people in general should know about'. Three questions are posed, and brief answers provided. The first question, 'What race are Hispanics? Black, white, brown?' is answered in a peculiar manner which endorses the existence of a Hispanic race while simultaneously advocat­ing more refined taxonomic distinctions for the proper identification of individuals.

The correct answer is all of the above. Hispanic refers not only to a race, but also to an origin or an ethnicity. There are Hispanic segments-Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Salvadorans, and others who are different in their indige­nous ancestry, origins, accents, and many other characteristics. (Ivancevich and Matteson, 1996: 99)

The answer provided to the next question, 'What is Confucianism?' reinforces the homogeneity of the 'Asian' category as it defines Confucian-

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ism as 'the major religious influence on Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese cultures' and describes it as emphasizing 'response to author­ity ... , hard work; discipline and the ability to delay gratification; harmony in relationships; and the importance of the group' (p. 99). The response to the last question, 'Does the term African-American apply to all blacks?' reveals the same insistence on taxonomic refinement as does the explication of 'Hispanics' (and the almost ludicrous, logical contor­tions which accompany attempts to objectively delineate the boundaries of such 'obvious' categories as 'African American'). The authors reply: 'No. Black Americans came from different cultures besides those in Africa. Caribbean, Central American and South American cultures have provided the US with many talented blacks' (p. 99). The student is to conclude, then, that dark-skinned individuals from these regions are to be properly included in the 'Black American' category, but not the 'African American'. In this 'Diversity Encounter' diversity is clearly defined in terms of group characteristics.

A similar piece is offered in Bateman and Zeithaml wherein the reader is informed about what 'others want out of their work and personal relationships'. The responses are organized by group. 'Younger and older employees want: .. .';'Women want: .. .'; 'Men want: .. .'; 'People of color want: .. .'; etc. (Bateman and Zeithaml, 1993: 378-9). What is lost in this insistence upon within-group homogeneity and between-group hetero­geneity is any discussion of differences within groups and similarities across group boundaries. Members of 'other groups' are exoticized as they are portrayed as distinctively different from members of one's own group. The reader is encouraged to think that s/he can learn about and under­stand the attitudes, motivations and behavioral characteristics of any individual he or she encounters in the workplace by becoming 'aware of' and 'valuing' the characteristics of the listed exotic groups and then determining the individual's proper identification, be it 'Hispanic­American', 'elderly' or 'white male'. It is important to reiterate that this insistence on diversity as particular characteristics of discrete, exoticized groups serves also to crowd out any affirmation or discussion of com­monalities across defined categories. Knowledge of group characteristics is to be the key to understanding others in the diverse workplace.

Second, the depiction of such groups as the repositories of diversity privileges a particular taxonomy of humanity as objective, 'natural' and, above all, clear and obvious. 'In addition to the more obvious groups­women, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans­[workforce diversity] also includes the physically disabled, gays and lesbians, and the elderly' (Robbins, 1996: 15). But nothing is less obvious than who, exactly, is a 'member' of any of these groups. What is the appropriate classification of a bisexual female with a speech impediment whose father is a 'white' person from Spain and whose mother is a member of the Zulu nation of southern Africa? Or, less absurdly, what is the 'obvious' category for the many children born of US servicemen and

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the women they encountered in Vietnam? What criterion might an employee in an organization use to determine whether a fellow worker is to be classified among 'the elderly?' Should it be chronological age, appearance, behavior, attitude, self-concept-or something else? The categories constructed through the discourse of workforce diversity as natural and obvious are hard-pressed to accommodate the complexity of real people.

Further, the creation of some of these 'obvious' and 'natural' categories is of quite recent vintage and the result of socio-political forces. 'Asian­American', for example, has been traced back only to the 1960s when it arose as a political label in response to the similarity of treatment that groups such as Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans and Korean Americans received from US institutions. Cultural and historical antago­nisms had traditionally separated these groups, and members of these ethnic groups had therefore not previously considered themselves as having a common political agenda. However, in response to the Vietnam War, seen as a racist war in which all Asian life was regarded as cheap and expendable, a common 'Asian-American' political identity was forged (Omi and Winant, 1994: 89, 109-10). The 'Asian-American' category is hardly 'obvious' or 'natural', but is clearly a pragmatic and historical response to political pressures.

The third way in which 'reality' is structured by these texts' definitions and treatment of diversity is the portrayal ofracial, gender, age and other stated primary dimensions of diversity as innate characteristics which define the essence of the individual. Race, age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and physical abilities/disabilities are presented as fixed, unchanging and unchangeable 'factors that make up the essence of who we are as human beings' (Moorhead and Griffin, 1995: 526). That each individ­ual was indeed born in a particular year at a particular place with a particular set of genes and chromosomes cannot be refuted. The meanings attached to these circumstances, however, are not 'in the genes'. That the meanings of any of the categories into which these primary dimensions of diversity are divided are innate and immutable is a position that has been eroded on many fronts. The overwhelmingly social construction of such meanings has long been argued throughout the social sciences. Scott cites arguments that gender is used 'as a way of referring to the social organiz­ation of the relationship between the sexes ... a way of denoting "cultural constructions" -the entirely social creation of ideas about appropriate roles for women and men ... a social category imposed on a sexed body' (1986: 1053, 1056). Similarly, Omi and Winant state: 'Our theory of racial formation emphasizes the social nature ofrace, the absence of any essential racial characteristics, [and] the historical flexibility of racial meanings and categories' (1994: 4). Woodward contends that although the term 'aging' is derived from the biological realm, 'Aging is also a social process, and as such it is accorded different cultural values in different settings' (Wood­ward, 1994: 58), and she draws on Itzin for support:

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Ageism is usually regarded as being something that affects the lives of older people. Like ageing, however, it affects every individual from birth onwards­at every stage putting limits and constraints on experience, expectations, relationships and opportunities. Its divisions are as arbitrary as those of race, gender, class and religion. (Itzin in Woodward, 1994: 47, emphasis added}

Stone and Colella (1996: 354) point out that far from being innate and immutable, 'disabilities can change (e.g., a person with cancer can go into remission) ... and social consensus about what constitutes a disability can vary', while Marks cautions:

The differences among human groups are for the most part differences of self­identification, using categories that are culturally constructed. Sometimes they correlate with biological differences; often they don't. The basic error lies in confusing the cultural boundaries for natural ones, and then concluding that the groups they delineate are real, rather than constructed. (1995: 260}

As demonstrated above, however, the 'reality' constructed by the OB text­books' definitions of diversity is one of obvious, clearly differentiated, homogeneous groups, the characteristics of whose members are innate and immutable. The differences among these essentialized groups are the focus of the discourse of workforce diversity. Managing diversity is the process of 'managing the differences among people in organizations' (Moorhead and Griffin,1995: 519). 'It means understanding and appreciating employee differences to build a more effective and profitable organization' (Bateman and Zeithaml, 1993: 377). The definition and characteristics of workforce diversity as constructed through the development of diversity discourse have been made clear. The importation of diversity from the bio-physical context of botanical and zoological taxonomy into the social­political context of the contemporary workplace has resulted in the por­trayal of 'employee differences' as primarily a matter of category membership. Individuals can be identified and classified, as can speci­mens of trees or ants. The categories or 'subspecies' into which individuals are classified are discrete, exhibit internal homogeneity and are of a dif­ferent essence one from another. We now consider the ultimate question posed at the outset of this article: what are the personal and organizational consequences of this diversity discourse?

Diversity: A Decontextualized and Divisive Discourse Exposure to managerial diversity discourse encourages individuals to view their colleagues in particular ways. Individuals are encouraged to believe that the racio-ethnic, gender and other demographic categories defined by their own previous experience and by the particular social, economic and political forces of our society correspond to real, innate differences of kind. Personal history, the particular circumstances (both personal and organizational) of any incident as well as societal and institu­tional influences are to be discounted in the diversity-trained individual's

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attribution process, as behaviors are to be ascribed to demographic group membership. One is further encouraged to believe that the differences defined by the selected demographic categories reflect essential differ­ences in attitude, personality and behavior, and that these differences are set and unchangeable. Demographically different others are thus to be viewed as exotic and essentially different from oneself. This distancing effect has been noted by critics of diversity training.

Black and white employees who were watching the same TV programs at home the previous night, and perhaps eating the same junk food at the mall during lunchtime, are taught to think of each other as exotic creatures from different worlds .... (Sowell, 1993)

Further, this essentialized conceptualization of others denies the over­arching influence of macro-level social, political and economic forces, and fosters a narrowly focused, ahistorical and decontextualized assessment of the thoughts and actions of specific individuals in particular organiz­ational situations. Unconsidered, for example, are the pressures experi­enced by individuals in the US workplace as a result of increased global competition. Cost-cutting in the form of corporate downsizing has elimi­nated workers at all company levels, while exerting pressure for increased productivity on those who remain. Meanwhile, the flattening of organiz­ational hierarchies and the imperative to 'empower' workers have ren­dered it increasingly difficult for managers to envision 'career paths' for themselves. The influence of these and other socio-economic pressures in shaping the thoughts and behaviors of individuals in the workplace are unacknowledged in diversity discourse. Diversity discourse can be seen, thus, as subscribing to the 'fallacy of suppressed structure' whereby the influences exerted by forces exogenous to a situation are taken as given, and thereby rendered invisible and unquestioned. The causes of problems and the explanations of behaviors and outcomes are located within the individuals involved (who, according to diversity discourse, are to be understood as exemplars of particular demographic categories), rather than in the macro-level forces influencing the structure of the situation (A. Garfinkel, 1981: 128).

The essentializing discourse of diversity encourages individuals to immediately attribute their colleagues' thoughts and behaviors to their demographic category membership. The resultant denial of the complexity of personal motivations and behaviors is described by the writer Gish Jen:

The way I am defined from the outside ... is as Asian-American. To most people, that's who I 'obviously' and 'naturally' am, even though in my daily life, it's not always the most obvious thing about my identity. In fact, probably more of my life is shaped by my temperament and my rebelliousness. And my talkativeness. And my being a mother. And being a woman is a big, big, big shaping thing, probably more than my race .... I resent all efforts to pigeonhole and ghettoize you. (quoted in Gilbert, 1996: 58)

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According to diversity discourse, how individuals in the workplace respond to managerial attempts to motivate, lead, reward, train or other­wise 'manage' them is to be regarded as a simple function of their 'obvious' and 'natural' diversity dimensions. Diversity discourse prescribes response to others by category membership and thus promotes pigeonhol­ing and ghettoizing. The essentialist nature of these 'pigeonholes' dis­courages more complex analyses of others' thoughts and actions. Diversity discourse reinforces individuals' tendency to commit what Ross (1977: 184) has termed 'the fundamental attribution error', wherein one 'over­estimates the importance of personal or dispositional factors relative to environmental influences' in determining behavior in a given situation. Diversity discourse further biases the individual's attribution process as categorization by certain racio-ethnic and gender criteria is highlighted, while alternative, more political, sources of difference in attitude, motiva­tion and behavior remain unconsidered. Divisions between labor and capi­tal or between the powerful and the powerless generate genuine conflicts of interest between employer and employee. If those involved in an employer-employee conflict can be identified as members of different demographic categories, such as 'white male' and 'Hispanic female', diver­sity discourse encourages the attribution of the dispute to differences in culture and lack of appreciation for those cultural differences. An inher­ently political (and thus structural and situational) conflict is redefined as a cultural misunderstanding between members of two ethnic groups, thereby defusing and deflecting any attempt to enact fundamental struc­tural change. It is here that one can perceive the paradoxical nature of diversity discourse. Diversity discourse is simultaneously anti-individual­ist, in that it privileges racio-ethnic and gender group membership as the primary determinant ofindividual identity, and anti-collectivist, in that it projects/constructs the notion that what divides members of organizations are their racial/ethnic and other primary diversity characteristics and not the economic/political gap between labor and capital or between 'human resources' and the users of those resources.

Conclusion: Discourse and Analytical Closure The managing diversity discourse of OB texts shares with the biodiversity of World Resources and the human genetic diversity of the HGDP a heritage of essentialism derived from diversity's roots in pre-Darwinian biological thought. All three construct 'realities' in which diversity consists of exotic and essentialized 'species' of others, grouped by selected observable sim­ilarities, which have been privileged over alternative classification criteria. These essentialized 'realities' are untouched by the historical, processual and intersubjective aspects of the phenomena they seek to reflect. Manag­ing diversity ignores the ongoing social construction processes of organiz­ational life in favor of an essentialist framework emphasizing 'innate and immutable' characteristics of 'obvious' demographic categories.

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Rather than promulgating and reinforcing the discourse of diversity, replete with its heritage of taxonomy and essentialism, management prac­titioners, theorists and educators might consider a process-oriented theory of difference. Such a theory would embrace the psychological and socio­logical complexities at play in the social construction of organizational experience. It would encourage organizational members to approach one another as evolving and multidimensional individuals acting and inter­acting within a context of history, cultural norms, power relations and social institutions rather than as unidimensional representatives of demo­graphic categories.

Such an approach has been taken by West and Fenstermaker (1995: 8) who present a theory of '"difference" as an ongoing interactional accomplishment'. Approaching difference from an ethnomethodological perspective (H. Garfinkel, 1967; Zimmerman, 1978), West and Fenster­maker demonstrate how race, gender and social class, 'characteristics' of individuals which seem (and according to diversity discourse are] objective, factual and trans-situational, are, instead, managed accom­plishments or achievements of specific interactive processes. The domain of available categories (e.g. African-American, white, Asian-American, etc.), the delineation of boundaries among those categories (e.g. between black and white races, or middle and lower classes) and each individual's assignment of others into race, gender and class categories are all constructed through a complex process of expectations, accountability and compliance, operating within a societal context of unequal power relations.

Another process-oriented approach to difference, rooted in social psy­chology, is advanced by Stone and Colella in their 'Model of Factors Affecting the Treatment of Disabled Individuals in Organizations' (1996). This model is an attempt to capture the interactive complexity that creates the experiences of 'disabled individuals' in the workplace. Included in this model, among many other factors, are organizational characteristics (e.g. technology, norms and values), legislation, attributes of the disabled individual (e.g. nature of the disability, status/social power, interpersonal style), attributes of co-workers and supervisors (e.g. personality, previous contact with disabled persons), co-workers' and supervisors' job-related expectations of the disabled individual, and the responses of the disabled individual, both affective and behavioral. The interactions among the multiple factors are shown to create the 'reality' experienced by the individuals involved.

What these two approaches to difference share is an emphasis on complexity and interactivity within a framework of cultural norms, social institutions and power relations. They both contend that the particular differences individuals perceive among one another (as opposed to other, unperceived differences), together with the meanings of those perceived differences, are continually constructed through ongoing processes. There are no essential, innate and immutable characteristics ofrace, age, gender,

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(dis)ability or other demographic categories. Instead there are history, context, process, interactivity, power relations and change.

The managerial discourse of diversity, as promulgated in a sample of recent management and OB textbooks, is historically rooted in a tradition of immutable essentialism and biological species diversity. As con­structed along with other contemporary diversity discourses, such as biodiversity and human genetic diversity, workforce diversity contends that differences among individuals can be primarily understood by determining each person's proper membership category and learning about the unique and essential characteristics of that category, be it African-American, woman, elderly or disabled person. Through these essentialist assumptions, diversity discourse creates and reinforces divi­sions while obscuring commonalities. Diversity discourse portrays socially constructed demographic categories as obvious, natural and immutable, and thereby precludes any consideration of mechanisms for change. Diversity discourse instructs individuals to treat others on the basis of their category memberships and to attribute others' motivations, attitudes and behaviors to their category memberships. Diversity is a divisive and disabling discourse.

Acknowledgements. Thanks to Linda Smircich, Arturo Escobar, L. Jor­dan Kraus, Jillian Woodilla, Tom Keenoy, Cliff Oswick and David Grant for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.

1 The primary source for this discussion of the history of diversity in biological thought is Ernst Mayr's fascinating The Growth of Biological Thought: Diver­sity, Evolution, and Inheritance (1982).

2 Taxonomy is defined as 'the theory and practice of delimiting kinds of organisms and of classifying them' (Mayr, 1982: 146), and can be divided into two sub-fields. Classification or macrotaxonomy is the assembly of populations and taxa of organisms into groups and these aggregations into even larger groups; while identification or microtaxonomy, based on deductive reasoning, is the process of placing 'an investigated individual into one of the classes of an already existing classification. If one succeeds, one has identified the specimen' (p. 147).

3 For an analysis of one such site of competing interests, the Pacific coast of Colombia, see Arturo Escobar's recent work, Encountering Development, The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1995); and his (1994) conference paper.

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