Race and Organizing

Abstract

Race is a complex, socially constructed category of difference that impacts all facets of social life. The organizational communication discipline has been critiqued for the absence of efforts to incorporate race into literature regarding pedagogy, theory, and research. Early attempts to address race did so in a historical and decontextualized ways, resulting in the marginalization of race in epistemological practices. Eventually scholarly efforts to incorporate race more fully sought to understand how race influences and manifests in organizational phenomena such as affirmative action policy, tokenism, leadership, decision making, and organizational performance. These efforts have resulted in the extension and development of communication theory. Emerging literature is taking strides to mark whiteness by calling attention to white supremacy and privilege in communication processes. The entry concludes with directions for future research and suggested readings

Difference, Diversity, and Inclusion

“…Moreover, diversity management discourse can reify binary and stable notions of identity by assuming inherent differences between the social groups that are delineated. As such, diverse subjects can become tokens that are expected to represent the entire group to which they are hailed as belonging, whereas normative subjects are seen as representing only themselves (Gist and Hode 2017). We thus believe that diversity consultants must be reflexive about the political implications of casting certain groups within the purview of diversity management.…”