The Google Memo Gate: Negotiating Organizational Exclusion Under the Banner of Inclusion

Abstract

While many large and well-known companies publicly advertise their commitment to values of diversity and inclusion, their sheer number of applicants forces them to continuously negotiate both premises for and actual exclusion decisions. By looking at a particularly public membership negotiation process at the company Google, we thus investigate the question how organizational exclusion is negotiated in the context of ideals of inclusion? Applying a ‘communicative constitution of organizations’ perspective, we find that de-/legitimization struggles of exclusion revolve around references to different inclusion ideals that are part of an overarching ‘inclusion paradigm’. At the same time, our study highlights the relevance of inclusion ideals constituted outside and with only marginal contribution by individual organizations publicly committing to ideals of diversity and inclusion for their membership-related decision-making.