Carlsberg Foundation: Research Grant to Florence Villesèche
Associate Professor Florence Villesèche has received a 'Young Researcher Fellowship' grant from the Carlsberg Foundation of DKK 4,489,175 for the project “Equality, Diversity and Inclusion as a moralized market”.
This project breaks new ground by shifting our attention to the variety of actors that engage with EDI as expertise suppliers. Furthermore, this stretches our attention to the relations amongst these actors as well as to the relations between these actors and their client organisations - rather than focusing on the virtuousness of their common goals. The project also contributes to leveraging the use of network analysis in diversity research.
What
Business research on equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace focuses on what happens inside public and private organization, i.e. diversity management. We thus oversee a variety of actors who engage with equality, diversity and inclusion as expert suppliers such as consulting and search firms, associations and NGOs, or even business networks. We know little about the role such actors play in influencing this agenda in the workplace and the type of change being achieved, in particular with regards to the balance between the business and ethical dimensions.
Why
This project breaks new ground by shifting our attention to the variety of actors that engage with equality, diversity and inclusion as expertise suppliers. Furthermore, this stretches our attention to the relations amongst these actors as well as to the relations between these actors and their client organisations - rather than focusing on the virtuousness of their common goals. The project also contributes to leveraging the use of network analysis in diversity research.
The main objectives are to:
- Theorize equality, diversity and inclusion as a moralized market and approach it empirically as a sociological field
- Study the positions and relationships of actors in the EDI field with social network analysis
- Conduct a qualitative investigation of the sensemaking and identity work of the experts conducting work on equality, diversity and inclusion
Find more information on the project at the Carlsberg Foundation website.