Making Change Happen: Exploring the Change Discourse of Managers in a CSR Context

Abstract

Diversity managers bear the responsibility of developing and implementing diversity policies. Despite advances in the legislation to fight discrimination, they often encounter resistance and need to generate change and to influence behaviors in the firm. Hence, they develop strategies to implement diversity within the organization. Based on the structuration approach developed by Giddens, and Barley and Tolbert, this research examines the discourse of diversity managers to generate change and institutionalize diversity. Based on a series of 37 in-depth interviews with diversity managers and experts in France, we identified eight scripts for diversity management in organizations. Whereas some scripts have the potential to generate change, others foster a “business as usual” vision of diversity and are in fact non-diversity scripts. This research sheds light on the role of discourse in promoting diversity in firms. To disrupt organizational practices, discourse needs to unveil hidden prejudice, and to be embedded in legislation, time, and space.