Unequal solidarity? Towards a norm-critical approach to welfare logics

مقاله سال ۲۰۱۷

 مجله اسکاندیناویایی مدیریت – Scandinavian Journal of Management

 دانشکده بازرگانی کپنهاگ، دانمارک

Ethnic diversity in the Danish labour market is increasing. However, despite several decades of active labour-market policies aimed at integrating ethnic-minority citizens, minorities are overrepresented in low-skilled and temporary jobs, underrepresented in management positions, and more likely than members of the majority ethnic group to face unemployment (Andersen, Andersen, Olsen, Ploug, & Sabiers, 2015; Ejrnæs, 2012; Rennison, 2009; Romani, Holck, Holgersson, & Muhr, 2016; see also Ortlieb & Sieben, 2014; Siim, 2013 for international comparison). These macro trends are also reflected in the micro situation in organizations, as unequal opportunity structures, and the inequality that accompanies them, often endure, even in organizations committed to diversity and equality (Acker, 2006 Holck, 2016a, 2016b; Holvino & Kamp, 2009; Risberg & Søderberg, 2008; Larsen, 2011; Marfelt & Muhr, 2016). In this way, Danish (as well as international) organizations spend a lot of resources on diversity management initiatives, which seem to have little effectin creating a fertile ground for equal opportunities (Al Ariss, Vassilopoulou, Özbilgin, & Game, 2013; Dobbin, Soohan, & Kalev, 2011; Dover et al., 2016; Ghorashi & Sabelis, 2013; Holck, Muhr, & Villesèche, 2016; Jonsen, Tatli, Özbilgin, & Bell, 2013; Kalev, Dobbin, & Kelly, 2006). This paper investigates the question of why – despite good intentions and inclusive labour-market Schemes – Danish organizations still struggle with integrating ethnic-minority employees in the workforce.

A critical body of diversity literature has successfully demonstrated how diversity management as a managerial practice is shaped and interpreted through social power hierarchies and by essentializing otherness in favour of majority employees (e.g. Ahonen et al., 2014; Boogaard & Roggeband, 2010; Ghorashi & Sabelis, 2013; Omanovi
c, 2013; Schwabenland & Tomlinson, 2015; Zanoni & Janssens, 2015). This paper departs from this critical argument and focuses on the historical-political aspect of these power dynamics. More specifically, we show how the precarious minority position in the Danish labour market as well as in Danish organizations is reproduced and sustained by two distinct and entwined logics behind the Danish welfare model: 1) equality as sameness, which fosters assimilation and a preference for imilarity; and 2) solidarity as social responsibility, which encourages companies to act responsibly by taking in allegedly marginalized minorities on state-subsidized schemes. By critically analysing how these two welfare logics play out and influence the way minorities are perceived – and thereby constructed as employees – at the organizational level, we demonstrate how this combination of welfare logics invalidates minority skills and competences brought to the labour market to the detriment of the recognition of difference contained in the otherwise popular business case of diversity management, which dominates the international diversity literature (Bendick, Egan, & Lanier, 2010; Dobbin et al., 2011; Kalev et al., 2006; Noon, 2007; Oswick & Noon, 2014; Zanoni et al., 2010). Thus, although the critique of the business case argument has raised important awareness about the fact that diversity management is never neutral and that there is always a pre-imposed hierarchical relationship between races, ethnicities, sexes, sexual orientations, etc., which makes a socalled meritocracy impossible, it seems that the critical stand has also missed out on what we can learn from the business case argument about recognition of difference.

As such, a central dilemma addressed in this article is the tradeoff between recognition and redistribution, so eloquently discussed by the American author Nancy Fraser (e.g. Fraser, 1998; Fraser & Honneth, 2003). By drawing on Fraser, we uncover how diversity is a matter of balancing redistribution with recognition. Here, we diagnose the current maladies of diversity in a Danish context to be a matter of redistribution without (or even at the cost of) recognition, which is equally as devastating as recognition without redistribution (which is at the centre of Fraser’s analyses in the North American context). Recognition of difference and hence social justice by means of both redistribution and recognition introduces the omission of critical diversity scholars predominantly framing difference as a matter of recognition (and status), while not paying sufficient attention to how to develop adequate means to rectify matters of redistribution and class (e.g. Acker, 2006; Kalev, 2009; Kalev et al., 2006). By analysing data of diversity and its management in a Danish organization within a theoretical framework combining social theory on (Danish) welfare logics and Fraser’s conceptualization of social justice as a matter of recognition and redistribution, we are able to contribute to critical diversity literature in two respects: 1) by showing how certain logics of the welfare state (that have otherwise been highly praised in e.g. the North American context) limit the possibility for diversity and equality in a Danish workforce, and 2) by re-inscribing diversity management rationales (drawing on business case arguments) into the critical organizational commitment to social justice (drawing on a moral critical rationale).