From Diversity Management to Diversimilation: On How the Logics of the Welfare Model Obstructs Ethnic Diversity in the Danish Workforce

“Diversimilation” as a corporate response to diversity By PhD fellow Lotte Holck, Copenhagen Business School (IOA) Abstract Across the North Atlantic organizations struggle to harvest the perceived ’ fruits’ of diversity of enhanced organizational learning and requisite variety enriching task performance in response to globalized markets and customers – but by means of different approaches to organizing diversity (Klarsfeld 2012, Embrick 2011, Banting 2010, Holvino & Kamp 2009, Matten & Moon 2008, Risberg & Søderberg 2008, Campbell 2007, Boxenbaum 2007). The argument of this paper is that this is partly due to the history of diversity and maturity of the diversity agenda, where especially the US confrontation with and acknowledgement of a colonial past has made way for a more "advanced" approach valuing diversity, while in a Danish context - through distancing itself from having an explicit colonial past ,– the approach to diversity is stuck in a colonial discourse distinguishing between native Danes and foreign employees making up for “diversimilation” combining the assimilation of diversity with a moral impetus of corporate responsibility rhetoric (Muhr 2012, Hübinette 2011, Holvino 2008, Zanoni and Janssens 2007, Holvino & Kamp 2009, Boxenbaum 2007 ). By drawing on case examples it is substantiated how these differences are mediated through institutional conditions that enable and constrain organizational rationales for working with diversity (Ollier-Malaterre 2013, Jonsen 2013 and Jonsen 2011, Tatli 2012, Zanoni 2010). Secondly how the existence of a multiplexity of institutional logics in the field of diversity creates a situation of an equivocal local enactment embracing both possibilities for stagnation and change (McPherson & Sauder 2013, Zilber 2013, Jarzabkowski 2013).