Challenging the cross-national transfer of diversity management in MNCs: Exploring the ‘identity effects’ of diversity discourses

Dulini Fernando*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

I develop a critique of the cross-national transfer of diversity management in multinational companies. Adopting a critical approach to diversity management, and considering diversity as a discourse, I examine how and why employees in an overseas subsidiary challenged the diversity practices transferred by their foreign parent company. Drawing on a case study of a Sri Lankan knowledge work firm that was in the process of implementing its Western parent company’s Diversity Management agenda, which they had had little input in shaping, I highlight how challenge is triggered by a desire to reject unfavourable subject positions attributed to individuals in transferred discourses of diversity and to reposition the self more favourably. My contribution involves showing how dynamic power relations between parents and subsidiaries shape the global transfer of diversity across MNCs, depicting subsidiary employees as agentic subjects as opposed to passive recipients.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2126-2152
Number of pages26
JournalHuman Relations
Volume74
Issue number12
Early online date9 Sept 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2021

Bibliographical note

© The Author(s) 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). Request permissions for this article.

Keywords

  • discourse
  • diversity
  • identity
  • MNC
  • power
  • resistance

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