The current literature yields contrasting diagnoses of the diversity problem in the professions: (a) a dominant ‘absence’ view, which explains the exclusion of certain people as a lack to be rectified and (b) an alternative ‘presence’ view, which explains exclusion as a consequence of tacit inclusion. Although the latter challenges the former by exposing the historical interdependence of exclusion and inclusion, it fails to illuminate a path towards contemporary inclusion. This article develops a third, dialectical, view, which theorizes the inclusivity‐exclusivity relation as a contemporary crisis of representation managed through occupational branding. The proposed stance mediates between the optimism of the absence view and the scepticism of the presence view by placing historical formations in undetermined tension with contemporary exigencies. By analysing how specific inclusivity‐exclusivity tensions are confronted through strategic interventions in the marketplace of occupational identity, the dialectical view stands to generate novel possibilities for social change.

Drawing on the literature on active objects and combining it with an ethnographic study of engineering work, this paper offers an alternative and complementary understanding of the problem of control in knowledge-intensive work. This problem largely concerns the question of how creative processes of knowing are enabled on behalf of the organization. The dominant response to this question revolves around the idea that when work becomes complex, managers attempt to control the norms and identifications of employees, rather than their behaviours. Through the concept of object-control, the idea is introduced that organizational objects participate on behalf of the organization in processes of knowledge control by interpellating organizational members; that is, organizational members are invited to interact with the objects and to creatively develop knowledge in order to solve organizational problems. The study covers ground that the established notions of normative control and identity regulation have neglected, and suggests new ways of advancing the scholarship of organizational control by taking the active participation of organizational objects into account.

Scholarship on branding has made important contributions in terms of the value-creating function of branding. However, previous literature has overemphasized the creation of value for organizations at the expense of an understanding of the destructive side of branding for organizations and society. Drawing on the work of Boltanski and Thevénot, we theorize value as different in separate ‘worlds of worth’ and offer a competing approach, arguing that the organizational practice of branding simultaneously and inevitably involves value-destructive aspects. In addition, to enable analysis of these value-destructive aspects, we argue that new understandings of what branding is are needed, and therefore, we introduce two new metaphors: branding as discursive closure and branding as hypocrisy. Based on these conceptual developments, the article offers a heuristic model for analyzing how, and what types of, value may be destroyed in organizational branding practice. We thereby contribute with a critical understanding of organizational branding that acknowledges the conflictual relationship between value regimes and enables a balanced analysis of the social consequences of branding.

While knowledge theorists give attention to knowing in practice, two common habits in the empirical literature, which we call knowledge inherency and skepticism, serve to re-center certain practitioners. The sites in which we study knowing thereby remain limited, hindering a fuller practice turn. We argue that this enduring tendency is problematic because it inhibits our understanding of 'communicative knowledge' -a form of knowing central to the contemporary economy. Yet communicative knowledge is persistently relegated to secondary status through a logic that is simultaneously gendered and classed. We thus suggest a more thorough shift toward the study of 'knowledge in work' (Thompson et al., 2001), wherein such a priori associations are suspended, and all practitioners de-centered, in the interest of understanding specific forms, systems, and relations of knowledge entailed in situated practices of knowing. The second half of the article develops specific empirical strategies for doing so. The strategies are meant to enable grounded analysis of knowing practices in various lines of work to interrogate how these may be different to practices with which we are more familiar, as well as inquiry into similarities between these familiar practices and new ones in order to destabilize the link between knowledge and certain practitioners.

Seen through the growth of progressive diversity policies it may appear that contemporary organizations are sites of equality. But although inclusion is the formally stated aim of many organizations, exclusionary pressures toward LGBT workers still challenge sexual minorities' access to full inclusion. A central concern in this paper is exploring how to understand inclusion in organizational contexts where inclusion is formally advocated, and yet where both inclusionary and exclusionary pressures exist. Drawing on an interview study of Swedish gay and lesbian police officers we present the concept ‘peripheral inclusion' as a way to understand inclusion in contemporary organizational life. In addition, we theorize that the dynamics between silencing and voice is a key mode that impacts the informal ways in which exclusion and inclusion occur. We thereby contribute to previous research on inclusion that has focused on the degree to which minorities are included by conceptualizing the mode in which inclusion occurs in everyday work. Studying modes and degrees of inclusion and exclusion in relation to each other highlights how inclusion is a collective and fragile process in which inclusionary and exclusionary pressures coexist, and that questions of who and what is included in contemporary organizations are shifting and open questions.