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With this introductory chapter, we give an overview of the purpose, audience, structure and content of this 22-chapter edited volume. In the past couple of decades, equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) have become features of organisations based not only on major legal and societal advances for inclusion but also on neoliberal economic reasoning. This importance of EDI in organisations is fuelled by worldwide, but locally determined, discourses on equality, diversity and inclusion, ranging from equal opportunities and gender mainstreaming to managing diversity and diversity management in legal, political, social and economic, and even environmental contexts. It is not only locations that matter for the (re)production of EDI processes; so do governance, size and sector of organisations. This width and depth of EDI discourses have already been covered by different books published in recent years which focus on different topics. Drawing on different perspectives these books covered a range of EDI issues such as general overviews (Konrad et al. 2006; Gatrell and Swan 2008; Green and Kirton 2009; Bendl et al. 2015), diversity dimensions (Pincus 2006; Bell 2012), inclusion (Ferdman and Deane 2014), regional and international perspectives (Kecia 2008; Ozbilgin and Tatli 2008; Klarsfeld 2010; Ozbiligin and Syed 2010; Klarsfeld et al. 2014, 2016), workplace issues (Prasad et al. 1997; Brief 2008; Ozbilgin 2009; Tyson and Parry 2011; Mor Barak 2017), special sectors (Rice 2005; Dancy 2010; Edwards 2010), challenges from legal unpinning (Kirton and Greene 2006; Healy et al. 2011), cases (Konrad 2006) and identity issues (Michaels 2006; Stockdale and Crosby 2006; Hannum et al. 2010; Booysen 2018) as well as broader economic and political issues (Williamson 2006; Carayannis et al. 2008; Lott 2010). While many texts in these books have an empirical basis and provide thought-provoking insights, it has become evident that empirical work with EDI issues requires attention to contextual and local specifics, intersectionality and widely researched processes of reproduction of stereotypes, as well as the influence of identity formation processes of the researched subjects and researchers during the research process (Zanoni et al. 2010; Atewologun et al. 2016). Common qualitative and quantitative research approaches fall far short of addressing the challenges of EDI research and have to be revisited, and even reinvented, to further explain the complex processes of EDI. Special emphasis also needs to be placed on the unequal relationship between the researcher and the researched, the socio-historical contexts, and the power dynamics embedded in the institutions, social systems and research loca-tions when engaging in EDI research. |
