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Envisioning inclusive organizations: theory-building and corporate practice
Edited by Dr Johanna Hofbauer and Dr Astrid Podsiadlowski
1. Introduction
"Inclusive organisation" is a slippery concept to define because it refers to the term "inclusion". Indeed, inclusion represents a "cross-category" ([26] Link, 2003, p. 14), which travels through various scientific, public and everyday discourses and is thus far from being unambiguous. Therefore, it is remarkable that inclusion is mostly implicitly referenced in studies about membership, diversity and inequality in organisations and seldom explicitly addressed (e.g. [6] Brose et al. , 1994). In this paper I therefore strive to provide an overview of different scientific discourses on inclusion (and exclusion) to substantiate the conceptual and theoretical content of the buzzword "inclusive organisation".
As shown below, the definition of inclusion is twofold: on the one hand, it adheres to the general understanding of inclusion as a process and condition where people gain access to areas from which they were formerly un/-intentionally excluded (see Sections 2 and 3). Here inclusion is considered as a desirable goal, while exclusion needs to be transcended. Against this background, the development of measurement criteria ([20] Janssens and Zanoni, 2008; [32] Mor Barak, 2000; [33] Mor Barak and Cherin, 1998; [41] Pelled et al. , 1999) for individuals' inclusion/exclusion status in an organisation is necessary in order to conduct empirically grounded research (see Section 5). On the other hand, inclusion and exclusion are considered as constitutively related which means that every inclusion implies an exclusion and vice-versa (see Section 4). This analytical perspective - in contrast to the normative one - raises awareness about the excluding side-effects of measures that actually strive towards inclusion. Thus, according to these two approaches, "inclusive organisations" are understood as, on the one hand, sensitive to power relations, which are embedded in historical inequalities, and on the other hand characterised by efforts geared towards change.
I will now review the relevant scientific discourses in the area of inclusion/exclusion based on thematic rather than disciplinary differences in order to systematically highlight their ir-/relevance for the concept of an "inclusive organisation". Here, I follow and adapt classifications according to [4] Bohn (2006) as well as [53] Woodward and Kohli (2001). [4] Bohn (2006, pp. 12-13) identifies three mainly sociological approaches that focus...