Filtering Diversity

Abstract

The spread of corporate diversity programs in the past decade has meant renewed attention to the rhetoric of fairness in employment relations. A number of organizational dynamics can derail this project, however, especially at the transnational level. In the author's case studies of a U.S. high-tech firm (AmCo) and its subsidiary in India (TransCo), this happens through a filtering process, in which managers disassemble broad themes of diversity and repackage them in more narrow and exclusive terms. In the United States, the discourse of gender is more legitimate, whereas in India, it is ethnicity/race. These discourses of diversity have both positive and negative implications. They are used by managers to divert attention from overt forms of stratification and avoid disruptions in employee relations, yet they also generate a mutual critique between the two firms that can help to overcome the filtering process and achieve a more integrated understanding of discrimination.