Diversity management as identity regulation in the Post-Fordist productive space

Abstract

Breaking with previous literature, the chapter approaches diversity management as a mode of managerial control through identity regulation within the post-Fordist productive space. Such space is characterized by spatio-temporal discontinuities at the international, organizational and work levels which render traditional direct modes of control increasingly ineffective. Management increasingly controls labour indirectly by regulating workers’ identities as to make them develop a sense of the self conducive to the attainment of organizational goals. Diversity management regulates identity in three main ways, by defining workers as: individual entrepreneurial subjects, members of specific socio-demographic groups, and members of the organization. While the first and third ways draw respectively on HRM and organizational culture, the second way typifies diversity management. Management combines these complementary definitions in order to construct a flexible diversity management policy. However, the simultaneous use of three definitions introduces tensions in the identity regulation process that can be exploited by workers to resist their subordination. Therefore, while it might hamper the development of class consciousness across socio-demographic differences, diversity management does not prevent resistance tout court. Rather, it seems itself to provide conditions of possibilities for new forms of workers’ resistance to emerge.