Kaleidoscopic Inquiries: Queering Approaches to Organizational Diversity Work

Abstract

This multi-site qualitative research study utilizes a queer theoretical framework to analyze norms and normativity in organizational diversity work. The findings suggest that diversity work contributes to an ontological bifurcation of the individual and organization that foregrounds the individual and casts the organization to the background as an accessory to personal development. To understand how this ontological bifurcation emerges, the analysis traces three metaphors as focal points of norm inquiry related to diversity work – journey, container, and table – and considers them alongside the practices of training, data collection, and positional leadership. The persistent bifurcation of organization and individual helps to reinstate the very inequities that diversity work seeks to address, suggesting to both scholars and practitioners the need for a more durable disruption of the status quo in diversity work.