Solidarity Through Difference: Exploring the Linkage Between Team Diversity and Micro-practices of (In)Equality

This qualitative study explores the intricate linkage between organizing in diverse teams and relational (in)equality. Literature on diversity in teams predominantly applies a positivist approach prescriptive of how to compose the ‘successful’ diverse team while drawing up process gains and losses. Relying on an ethnographic study of diverse teams in a Danish subsidiary of a multinational service company renowned for its diversity profile and organizing work in diverse teams this article gives a nuanced picture of the relational dynamics of diverse teams both hindering and increasing relational (in)equality. It is explored how diversity is linked to paradoxical processes of gendered and ethnified hierarchies based in stereotypical in- and out-groups as well as (organic) solidarity through difference. Drawing on these paradoxical processes, the analysis unfolds how equality in diverse teams might be fostered by team practices that stress members’ heterogeneity and avoid reducing minority members to mere representatives of a (stigmatized) social group. These are furthermore team practices that strengthening team solidarity trough openness to difference.