Abstract: This paper deepens our understanding of the construction of ethno-racial diversity and difference in organizations, and the consequences of those discursive struggles on the lives of workers. Categories of difference are usually seen as building blocks of diversity management, however critical and postcolonial researchers have long pointed out the need to develop more flexible and context-sensitive epistemologies in studying racial inequality, beyond binary conceptions of blackness and whiteness. The Jewish context offers a unique opportunity to explore those discursive dynamics, due to the elusive nature of “Jewish difference”, taboos over the use of racial classifications, and possible conflicts between an anti-racist stance and a Zionist affiliation. Exploring the diversity discourse within UK Jewish nonprofit organizations reveals three main diversity frames: in the first, “Jews are white”, the construction the Jewish organization as a white space is explored, as well as DEI efforts to bridge the Jewish-black gap; the second, “Jews are non-white”, explores this re-emerging discourse in the context of DEI, and investigates its acceptance as an act of reclaiming a historically marginalized identity, and as an appropriation of racial difference; the third, “Jews are ethnically diverse” explores the manifestations of Ashkenazi-Sephardi relations in diaspora organizations, and the sidelining of race. Throughout those diversity discourses, the repercussions on the lives of workplace are critically examined.
Abstract: Diaspora organizations can be seen as spaces where national identities are negotiated, expanded, and contested, and as transnational sites where organizational members hold overlapping and multiple frames of belonging and loyalty. This framing suggests the potential to extend diversity debates beyond the us/them binary logic of the nation-state. This qualitative study explores representations of Israel-Palestine in Jewish organizations in the UK, that broadly identify with a liberal Zionist orientation. It examines how nationhood and attachment to “homeland” are constructed, negotiated, and managed in everyday organizational life, with particular attention to moments of ambiguity and dissent. It shows how, as employees navigate diasporic ambivalence, diversity and inclusion discourses work to shape and often limit political-ideological differences. It contributes to diversity and organization studies by conceptualizing nationhood and homeland attachment as DEI questions and by advancing a diaspora organizational lens on how nationalism and belonging are negotiated in workplaces. It also highlights the ambivalent role of communities in DEI work, showing how community engagement can operate both as a source of ethical grounding and as a gatekeeping mechanism that constrains organizational capacity to accommodate difference.
Abstract: In diversity studies, categories of difference are seen as building blocks. Critical organisational scholars emphasise the need to move from fixed conceptualisations of identity towards a more flexible, intersectional, multi-layered, and context-sensitive understanding of social difference and organisational inequality. This critique also involves shifting from a social psychology lens to a sociologically-oriented and historically-informed perspective. The elusive and multi-dimensional nature of Jewish identity offers a unique opportunity to explore those complexities around organisations and social difference. Jewish difference seems to disrupt diversity scholarship and practice, problematising ideas of whiteness and otherness, dominance and marginality, diaspora and homeland. Bridging the gap between EDI and Jewishness—and between management and organisation studies and Jewish studies—is of theoretical, practical, and political importance. The research study presented in this thesis examines the construction of diversity and difference in Jewish nonprofit organisations in the UK. It is positioned at the intersection of three main contexts: British society, the Jewish world, and the nonprofit sector. Adopting a sector-based approach, two data sources were collected and analysed: 45 interviews with employees, senior managers, and volunteers; and 102 online statements by 34 organisations within the sector. The empirical discussion traces the construction of three main social differences: Jewishness, race and ethnicity, and political-ideological difference. Conceptualising the Jewish nonprofit as an identity-based and a diaspora organisation, the findings shed light on the boundary work around the Jewish space and the Jewish community, the relations between Jewishness and whiteness at work, and the role of Israel-Palestine in shaping diversity debates in the diaspora. The study contributes to understanding the contextual and relational nature of diversity; disputes and paradoxes around identity in organisations; and diversity-inclusion gaps. It suggests the idea of the political case for diversity, elaborates debates around whiteness at work, and contributes to nonprofit literature around the construction and role of communities.
