Alain Klarsfeld

Social regulation and diversity management: A comparative study of France, Canada and the UK:

Much of the diversity management debate is trapped in a binary opposition between regulation and voluntarism. We argue for an evidence-based approach and illustrate this by offering a context-sensitive overview of workforce diversity debate and practice in three countries: France, Canada and the UK. We use Reynaud’s social regulation theory in order to challenge the assumption that there is a clear separation between regulation and voluntarism. The article unpacks the complexities and ambivalences of regulation of workforce diversity, which is generated by multiple influences.

Introduction: Social regulation of diversity and equality

This article introduces the special issue on diversity and equality. We discuss the development of European Union anti-discrimination legislation, in particular as relates to gender and race/ethnicity, and the ways in which different European countries have implemented equality legislation. We also explore the complexities of the translation of the North American concept of diversity to European contexts. In conclusion we consider the interconnections between law and the ‘voluntary’ initiatives of employers and trade unions, and compare the contributions of the articles that follow.

Pay policy variability within a French firm: the case of skill-based pay in a process technology context

Abstract This study used the case study approach to perform a longitudinal analysis of the implementation of skill-based pay plans in two different manufacturing plants in France within the same firm. The employees in both plants utilized the same process technology to produce cardboard boxes and packaging. Social regulation and bounded rationality theories were jointly used to explain the variations in pay plan design between the two plants. The results provide a deeper understanding of the implementation process and the variety of possible configurations of the design of skill-based pay.

Gender and diversity in organizations: international perspectives

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report upon the “Diversity and equal opportunities” Special Interest Group of the Francophone Association of Research in Human Resource Management (AGRH), which held its first international conference on “Gender and diversity in organizations”, at the ESCPEAP European Management School in Paris in January 2009.Design/methodology/approach – Equal opportunity and diversity management are relatively recent research fields in Continental Europe, and particularly in France, however there were 95 conference participants who attended two plenary sessions, four workshops and one round table.Findings – Sub‐themes were: diversity management and gender equality; Work‐life practices and equality policies between women and men; gender stereotypes and management; and womens and mens careers. The workshops covered: diversity management and gender equity; work‐life practices; women and mens careers; and social representations and stereotypes.Originality/value – This paper prov...

Comparative equality and diversity: main findings and research gaps

Purpose – This is a special issue introduction on cross-cultural and comparative diversity management (DM). The purpose of this paper is to present five articles that explore and examine some of the complexities of equality and DM in various countries around the world. Design/methodology/approach – In this introductory paper, the authors provide an overview and the current state of literature on comparative research on equality and diversity. The authors also gathered a list of indices that is helpful as secondary data for informing comparative and cross-national research in this domain. Findings – To date, comparative work involving two or more countries is scarce with Canada/USA comparisons first appearing in the 1990s, followed by other groupings of countries a decade later. Existing comparative work has started to uncover the dialectics of voluntary and mandated action: both complement each other, although the order in which they appear vary from context to context. This work also acknowledges that th...

Doing “male” diversity research in France: a self-reflective account

Purpose – Little is known qualitatively about how men become involved in diversity research. The purpose of this paper is to address a part of the gap in this type of research. Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a self-reflective account of how the author became involved in diversity work. Findings – The author argues that “doing diversity” can be said to reflect an implicit “tempered radical” (Meyerson and Scully, 1995) approach which triggered deep-level concerns about a particular invisible trait that – up to the present paper –the author had never addressed in the research. Research limitations/implications – The main limitation is that the contribution is based on a self-reflective account and can only be taken as a possibility among many possibilities; not as a representative situation. Practical implications – The diversity concepts vagueness which is often criticized for diluting pre-existing concerns about gender (and other) strands, appears to have the potential of helping male re...

Competence and Diversity: What Parallels Between Them? What Interconnections?

Abstract In this chapter, we first show how the concept of competency, and management of or by competency, can be a factor in helping more people find employment, improve employability and develop competency, thus contributing to increased diversity in the workforce at every level of an organisation. We then examine a different part of the literature, more closely related to organisational learning, which finds that deviance and diversity can potentially boost competency. Subsequently, we look at diversity management first as an organisational competency, then as an individual competency. Concerning the reasons for the spread of management by competency and diversity management, we shall see that their respective advocates employ the same rhetoric of economic rationality, with both types of practice being justified by an objective change in the environment and, for this reason, presented as unavoidable and to some extent as simply “moving with the times”. In opposition to this supposed rationality as seen by companies, we will show that, in France, the two concepts of competency and diversity interact closely with institutional processes of mimetism, normalisation and coercion. In the final section, we shall look more closely at critical views of management by competency and diversity, as the criticisms of the two concepts are very similar and question their (possible) claims to be propelling society towards a fairer society.

Introduction: equality and diversity in 14 countries – analysis and summary

the first edition of the International Handbook on Diversity Management at Work (klarsfeld, 2010a) considered the practice of diversity management within the national contexts of 16 countries – austria, belgium, canada, France, germany, India, Italy, the netherlands, Pakistan, singapore, south africa, sweden, switzerland, turkey, the Uk and the Usa. this second edition provides updates on some of the original country selections and supplements these with a further series of countryspecific overviews. new to this edition are australia, Finland, Japan, new Zealand, nigeria and russia. countries that have been updated and expanded are austria, canada, France, India, Italy, the netherlands, south africa and the Uk. Historically, human resource management, when dealing with issues of equality and diversity, was concerned with the disparate activities of dealing with equity issues in pay systems, statutory employment regulation in relation to discrimination and of managing crosscultural diversity when expatriate managers were sent to work overseas. one of the most significant effects of globalization has been a shift in the scope of diversity management into a much more interdependent and wideranging concept. the dynamics of labour markets around the world have led to far greater diversity of workforces and have therefore expanded the challenges to human resource managers in dealing with the consequences of these changes (verma and He, 2010). as the demographic profile of workers becomes more diverse in terms of age, gender, race and ethnicity, nationality, disability and other dimensions of diversity, human resource scholars and practitioners must now contend with managing intranational diversity within the workforce. owing to these conditions of superdiversity (vertovec, 2007) longstanding modes of national diversity are subjected to new and varied migration flows and increasing complex social formations marked by the dynamic interplay of different variables. the above shifts have also elevated the significance of diversity management in some countries discussed in this edition, such as canada, south africa and the Uk, from a functional to a strategic level on corporate and government agendas. It is important to study issues of diversity from a national perspective for several reasons. antidiscrimination legislation which regulates the treatment of disadvantaged groups differs from country to country and the dynamics of equality and diversity vary according to national historical circumstances (for instance, the nature and extent of postcolonial legacy). For example, employers in australia, canada, new Zealand, south africa and the Uk are required to collect data and monitor the progress of racial minority employees in the workforce in order to enhance equality, but the practice of collecting ‘ethnic’ data by employers is explicitly forbidden in France and many european Union (eU) countries – also in the name of equality – making it difficult to track the progress