Challenging the cross-national transfer of diversity management in MNCs

Exploring the ‘identity effects’ of diversity discourses

Bibliographic Data

ID9890876
AuthorsDulini Fernando (0000-0003-3388-3308, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume74
Issue12
Pages2126-2152
Publication date2021-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHuman Relations (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0018-7267 • E-ISSN: 1741-282X
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0018726720952838
OpenAlexW3086701237
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited58

I develop a critique of the cross-national transfer of diversity management in multinational companies. Adopting a critical approach to diversity management, and considering diversity as a discourse, I examine how and why employees in an overseas subsidiary challenged the diversity practices transferred by their foreign parent company. Drawing on a case study of a Sri Lankan knowledge work firm that was in the process of implementing its Western parent company’s Diversity Management agenda, which they had had little input in shaping, I highlight how challenge is triggered by a desire to reject unfavourable subject positions attributed to individuals in transferred discourses of diversity and to reposition the self more favourably. My contribution involves showing how dynamic power relations between parents and subsidiaries shape the global transfer of diversity across MNCs, depicting subsidiary employees as agentic subjects as opposed to passive recipients

Aesthetics · Cultural diversity · Diversity (politics · Diversity management · Human resource management · Identity (music · Multinational corporation · Parent company · Political science · Power (physics · Public relations · Sociology · Subsidiary · Anthropology · Family Business Performance and Succession · Gender Diversity and Inequality · International Student and Expatriate Challenges · Law

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access