Public seminars arranged by the Interdepartmental Research Group on Diversity and Discrimination - updated 12 May 10

The Diversity and Discrimination Research Group at Copenhagen Business School is holding a series of public seminars during 2009 – 2010 at which they will present their current research.

Lawyers, academics, students, business professionals and other stakeholders are welcome to attend the seminars.

All seminars will be announced through e-mail invitations and www.cbs.dk.

To be added to the mailing list, contact Trine Buch at tb.jur@cbs.dk or Kim A. Jørgensen at kaj.jur@cbs.dk

15 September 2009: Diversity and Discrimination Research at CBS: Public Seminar Series Launch

Seminar series launch and the lecture: "Why don't we like immigration (but don't mind trade)?" by Professor, Ph.D. Christian Dustman.

Christian Dustmans´s paper (pdf):

8 October 2009: Diversity Management in Denmark

The concept of diversity management originated in the USA and the UK. Both countries may be characterized as culturally heterogeneous – or multicultural – due to their large immigrant populations.

Associate Professor Annette Risberg and Professor Anne-Marie Søderberg from Department of Intercultural Communication and Management, CBS, will present their research on how the concept of diversity management is translated and adapted into the Danish societal context.

PowerPoint presentations (pdf):

27 October 2009: Diversity management discourse: Increasing or Limiting Diversity?

The explicit aim of diversity management is to increase the diversity of organizations, but does the very notion of managing diversity constrain diversity as well as - or instead of - enabling it?

Associate Professor Sine Nørholm Just and PhD Fellow Tanja Juul Christiansen from the Department of International Culture and Communication Studies, CBS, will present their research on the discursive construction of diversity and its possible consequences for managerial practice.

PowerPoint presentation from the seminar (pdf):

24 November 2009: Identity and knowledge professionals: Negotiating identity after maternity/parental leave

Speaker: Assistant Professor Robyn Remke, Department of Intercultural Communication

With many women employed outside the home, family leave is an increasingly important issue for families. While organizational and public policy allows for both men and women to take leave for the birth or adoption of a child, taking family leave isn't always easy or without professional consequence.

Family leave policies are written as one-size-fits all workers, but knowledge professionals often struggle to take leave while balancing the expectations of their organization and profession. But, organizations can do more to help their knowledge professionals.

This research argues for a reframing of family leave that considers the identity work employees engage in when they return to work. Structuring family leave in a way that allows organizational members more options to determine the way they take leave will lead to more satisfied and productive workers. This research examines ways in which organizations and managers can help their workers engage in family leave in a more positive way.

19 January 2010: Does workforce diversity boost export?

Speaker: Dario Pozzoli, Ph.D, post-doctoral researcher, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics

We analyze how labor diversity affects a firm's internationalization process. The composition of the labor force matters along two dimensions for the export behavior of firms. First, labor diversity may raise firm productivity and thus the export propensity. Secondly, it may increase the managerial and organizational ability of the firm, because it faces the challenge of diversity management, and thereby reduces the firm's fixed cost of exporting.

PowerPoint presentation from the seminar (pdf):

9 February 2010: Do attitudes towards immigrants matter?

Associate Professor Birthe Larsen, Department of Economics - CBS, will present research on the consequences of negative attitudes towards immigrants' welfare based on regional variation in negative attitudes towards immigrants to Sweden.

For example, the data show that a well educated immigrant from a non-developed country who lives in a municipality with strong negative attitudes earns less than what she would earn if she lived in a municipality where natives are more positive. This effect is interpreted as evidence of labour market discrimination.

The welfare effect of negative attitudes is then estimated, through their wages and local amenities, for immigrants with different levels of skills and origin.

Birthe Larsen's paper (pdf):

8 March 2010: Powerful dichotomies: Inclusion and exclusion in the information society

Speaker: Associate Professor Ester Barinaga, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy.

Technological development is frequently presented as the answer to many contemporary social problems. Poverty, lack of democracy, failing integration, unemployment, all may be dealt with the adequate technological means. In this kind of analysis inequality is often phrased in terms of a digital divide.

The solution to inequality is thus given: invest in developing high-tech regions. And yet, looking at well known high-tech regions, such as Silicon Valley in the US or Kista in the north of Stockholm, we see that these regions reproduce and reinforce socio-economic inequality.

This lecture aims at unveiling the practices of high-tech regions that contribute to perpetuate inequality.

PowerPoint presentation from the seminar (pdf):

13 April 2010: Discrimination bans with regard to access to and supply of goods and services

For many years the focus of EU action in the field of non-discrimination was on preventing discrimination on the grounds of nationality and gender.

Since the Treaty of Amsterdam came into force in 1999, new EU Directives have been enacted in the area of anti-discrimination, notably the Racial Equality Directive, 2000/43/EC, the Employment Equality Directive, 2000/78/EC and Directive 2004/113/EC which provided for the principle of equal treatment between men and women in the access to and supply of goods and services. Since the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty, 1 December 2009, the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights has the same legal value as the Treaties. Article 21 of the Charter provides that any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited.

At the seminar, professor Ruth Nielsen, Law Department, CBS will present her research on discrimination and equality law in regard to access to and supply of goods and services, i.e. on the interface between discrimination law and contract law.

PowerPoint presentation from the seminar (pdf):

25 May 2010, 1:00pm to 2:00 pm, Kilen, Room K143: Discrimination bans and the social psychology of oppression: Is current anti-discrimination law an effective way of dealing with social inequality?

Speaker: Associate Professor Lynn Roseberry, Department of Law.

In the EU, anti-discrimination law has granted the most protection against discrimination based on race and sex while the other prohibited grounds of discrimination have received less protection. This differentiation in protection resembles a pattern established in American anti-discrimination law, which American legal scholar Kenji Yoshino has called the "assimilationist paradigm". The essence of this paradigm is a requirement that proof of discrimination requires showing that the claimant is physically unable to assimilate to the allegedly discriminatory norm applied to him or her. I will argue that the assimilationist paradigm is based on a liberal theory of the self that does not correspond to modern psychological theories of identity formation and social oppression and that it is inherently ineffective in redressing many cases of discrimination. I will provide examples from European and American case law showing that this requirement is especially difficult to fulfil in cases of gender, sexual orientation, racial, ethnic and religious discrimination and explore the usefulness of alternative theories of identity in providing a better approach in these cases.