Attempts to Transform an Organization: Diversity Work in a Swedish Municipality

This paper builds on a case study of diversity work in a Swedish municipality, Malmö. It focuses on certain actors partaking in the diversity work done in the municipality that of a gender and diversity committee and its members – here called diversity ambassadors. I will describe the work of the diversity ambassadors and discuss what impact they could possibly have on the organization.
Organizational efforts to change inequalities at the workplace may take different forms. The literature describes different ways to organize the diversity and equality work. In this paper I will focus a specific group of people assigned to do diversity work – so called diversity ambassadors (Omanović, 2006) or diversity champions (Subeliani & Tsogas, 2005). The diversity ambassadors are representatives of different departments and units of the organization. The ambassadors are convened in a committee in order to implement diversity initiatives at the various organizational levels on behalf of senior management. Such committees, which ideally should include representatives from different hierarchical levels of the organization, are typically charged with overseeing diversity initiatives, identifying potential remedies and monitoring progress (Kalev, Kelly, & Dobbin, 2006).