Contenido de proteína

Part One has reviewed literature on DPs by synthesising it into three key areas. The first examines the role of the DP in particular with regards to the relationship that they have with the organisations/clients for which they work. It drew attention to the assumptions that underlie previous diversity research about the difficulties implementing diversity and proposed a way of viewing DPs as themselves effects of diversity, as a way that diversity is manifested. It re-read the dual, or liminal, nature of the DP, posited by other researchers as an experience, as a practice of subject formation thereby opening up the question not only of if this is done, but also how and why. Parrhesia was introduced as a set of concepts to theorise the role that DPs play in producing forms of knowledge for organisations and in actively constructing themselves in a particular role. The second section turned to the

question of how DPs recognise each other as legitimate actors in the field. How they divide themselves from others and construct a sense of ‘we’ could have an impact on what the aims of diversity work are and whether DPs collaborate or engage in collective action. The third section showed that, although DPs struggle with the uncertainly of diversity work, there is a lack of knowledge about how DPs create an

86 enclosure for it as a distinct set of skills and knowledge, and in so doing construct what it means to do diversity work.

The next part of the chapter is concerned with the second subject of this thesis – the ‘diversity trainee’ (DT), the subject that is sought through the practices of diversity training. It reviews the literature on diversity training with a view to generating sub-questions that will help contribute to our understanding of the DT.

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Part Two: Constructing the ‘diversity trainee’

This second part of the literature review is dedicated to the subject of the diversity trainee and the question: How is the subject of the ‘diversity trainee’ (DT)

constructed by diversity practitioners? (RQ2) As explained in Chapter One, research into the ‘subjects’ of diversity has focussed on how ‘minoritised’ subjects or groups are constructed, and there is relatively little literature on the role of diversity practitioners in the practices of diversity per se. This means that the following review draws predominantly on studies on diversity training in general. Diversity training is a widespread practice, but it lacks theorisation by scholars. Much of the research from the UK tends to have been produced within the context of EO. There is research on diversity training that hails from the US but there are important differences between the contexts of the UK and the US. Nevertheless, these bodies of literature provide a useful foundation to understanding what diversity training seeks to achieve and Foucauldian concepts help to generate questions about how it tries to do this.

This Part is divided into three sections that concern: how the problem that needs to be solved by training is defined, the aims of diversity training, and its techniques.

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Defining the need for diversity training

Training is a widespread diversity practice in UK organisations (Tatli and Özbilgin, 2007) and training is also a popular management technique in general. There is a large body of literature on training and development (T&D) within MOS and HRM (for example, Armstrong and Taylor, 2014, Kraiger et al., 1993). This work describes and theorises T&D in terms of the need for T&D to develop its design,

implementation, and evaluation, along with differences between formal modes of training and informal ones (for example, through social media: Bixby, 2010) In this literature, training exercises are theorised with regards to its design to complement learning (Fanning, 2011) and modes of delivery (Hopp, 2013). In the literature on EO training, it is reported that it employed similar exercises to those used in

general, such as role plays, discussions, and videos (Clements, 2000), and it has been suggested that diversity practices employ a range of exercises such as quizzes, presentations and games (Prasad and Mills, 1997).

Classic theories of learning developed by Kolb (1984) and Honey and Mumford (1989) tend to be used to theorise how the design of training exercises can be

optimised (see Torrington, 2014). This literature focuses on the processes of learning and improving the transfer of knowledge rather than critiquing the forms of

knowledge that are in use. The aim of training in organisations is to produce some sort of change or transformation in the trainee, and diversity training in particular

89 aims to change how trainees behave by changing their understandings of social relations, it ‘involves guiding participants towards incorporating new worldviews into their problem solving and decision making activities’ (McGuire and Bagher, 2010: 494-495). Foucault would see diversity training as a space for subject formation, and the trainee as the locus of this discursive knowledge (Foldy, 2002: 104). By neglecting to critique the specific forms of knowledge that are mobilised within the training encounter, it remains unclear in existing literature what type of transformation training seeks – how they want trainees to view themselves, their organisations, and social relations; who they want their trainees to be afterwards.

A handful of authors have drawn attention to the importance of offering new forms of knowledge in diversity training, making diversity training a transformative space. Swan argues that diversity training is not a ‘closed’ discursive event, in which the rationalities at play are completely co-opted by management, but is instead characterised by the ‘openness’ (2009: 310) of multiple voices and politics with roots in business discourse but also in anti-racist and anti-sexist discourses. She argues that trainers can exploit differences in the ways that social relations can be understood to disrupt trainees’ assumptions. With a similar focus, Goodman argues that diversity training can draw attention to how relations of power have an impact on everyone and that inequality is a social rather than an individual

phenomenon (2011: 137). She asserts that training offers space in which to talk about social relations and to reframe them, for instance in bringing to attention the default quality or invisibility of majoritised identities (2011: 23). Underlying these two

90 arguments is the idea of exposing trainees to different possible ways of

understanding social relations. This is echoed by Crawley (2007), who asserts that training can open up a space in which racism and sexism can be talked about openly allowing for a change of attitudes, and by Biccum (2007: 139), who suggests that training disrupts individuals’ worldviews to produce a ‘crisis’ that temporarily opens them up to alternative views.

Though their arguments are similar, there are different relationships to knowledge that are in use by Swan and Goodman. For Goodman (2011) training reveals a truer picture of social relations, revealing the powerful effect of privilege, but for Swan (2009) it reveals the changeable nature of social relations and multiple possibilities of knowledge, whilst recognising the persistent inequalities in society. Swan’s approach seems to imply an open nature to the use of discourse in diversity training with the drawing of attention to different forms of knowledge serving a primarily disruptive function. However, in Goodman’s approach knowledge is used to perform a normalising function, offering what is referred to in this thesis as a ‘programme’ of knowledge that is regarded as a more accurate way of viewing the world. This derives from Miller and Rose’s argument that reality is governed by the use of particular rationalities that open it up to being understood in a way that requires management and intervention, it is made ‘programmable’ (1990: 26). In order to transform them, a space must be opened up for the acceptance of new knowledge – through making a case for why the status quo is deficient – and a programme of knowledge offered for how the trainee should be otherwise. How

91 DPs approach the former of these tasks is addressed by the first sub-question, and the latter by the second.

Much of the literature on diversity has focussed on the cases that are made for change in the name of diversity. Scholars have highlighted the dangers of the business case, criticising it for making the introduction of initiatives or changes contingent on their benefit to business rather than the pursuit of equality or fairness in general (Dickens, 1994, Dickens, 1999, Kirton and Greene, 2010, Noon, 2007, Knights and Omanovic, 2016). Diversity as a general approach has also been criticised for individualising difference, by being more about individuals than groups (Ahmed and Swan, 2006: 98, Ahmed, 2007a: 237, Ahonen et al., 2014: 9, Liff, 1997). The dominance of a neoliberal, individualist discourse of the subject in the UK which focuses on individual responsibility, entrepreneurialism and agency (Thorsen and Lie, 2006) has been accompanied by a rise of the business case for diversity: the latter gains ‘currency’ (Ahmed, 2007a: 237) from speaking to the same underlying rationalities rather than resisting them, and by gaining credibility for being new and innovative (Prasad et al., 2011).

From a Foucauldian interpretation, what cases do is to offer rationalities for why reality that is problematic in some way; for instance, that the organisation is not as equal as it should be, or not as creative and productive as it could be. Foucault’s methodology of historical analysis focussed on identifying those tuning points in

92 history where one rationality of government was ‘problematised’ and replaced by another (Foucault, 1994/1984a). Problematisation has a power effect in its creation of new social relations. For Foucault, rationalities do not reflect a pre-existing reality but are ‘technologies of governance’ that construct it as thinkable and administrable (Lemke, 2012: 81). Lemke describes government as an inherently ‘problematizing activity’ in which deficiencies with the status quo are identified and by identifying these problems a space is created for interventions to be offered to first measure and then solve them (2012: 81-82, see also Rose and Miller, 2008: 143).

Re-reading the cases for diversity as part of a broader category of problematising rationalities opens up the possibility of identifying rationalities which fall beyond these traditional case-categories. To some extent the case categories have been challenged by scholars, having suggested that the business case has not entirely replaced the social justice case and that they are used in parallel (Liff and Dickens, 2000, Greene and Kirton, 2010). Some have also complicated the equal

opportunities-social justice/diversity-business case divide that has been made in mainstream research arguing that EO also used business case rationalities (Dickens, 1994) and even that for some organisations (third-sector) the business case can be collapsed into the social justice case (Tomlinson and Schwabenland, 2010). The present research considers whether there is any further evidence of complexity in the relationship between the cases for diversity. The first sub-question that facilitates the answering of RQ2 is therefore:

93 How is the status quo problematised in diversity training? (RQd)

This question helps to answer RQ2 by showing how a need for transformation of the trainee is constructed. As indicated earlier in this section, in conjunction with justifying the need for change to the status quo through problematisation, an alternative vision for who the trainee subject should be also needs to be offered in order to seek transformation. Literature pertaining to diversity training’s

programme of knowledge is addressed now.