Diversity Resistance in Organizations - Paperback

by Kecia M. Thomas (Editor)

This new volume revisits diversity resistance 10 years later, examining the fluidity of diversity resistance in workplaces. Top-notch contributors provide insight about the motivations to resist diversity and inclusion as well as offer strategies for preventing and derailing diversity resistance and enhancing inclusion in organizations.

The current edition broadens the conversation about diversity resistance by demonstrating methods of counter-resistance and how diversity resistance manifests in everyday lives, as well as how it presents itself and limits the careers and lives of various stigmatized groups. Chapters also consider why, despite the often expressed value for diversity and inclusion, diversity resistance continues to persist. Contributors demonstrate the persistence of diversity resistance across time, context and for a variety of targets. For example, this volume addresses topics as well as marginalized groups not previously discussed in the first edition such as intersectionality, workers living with mental illness, gender identity, trans workers and the systemic resistance experienced by gay couples.

This volume will be of interest to scholars and practitioners as well as minoritized workers. It will function as a framework for understanding the continuum of exclusion, harassment and discrimination that occurs within organizational settings and the impact upon individual and organizational performance. Practitioners will find examples and cases for how diversity resistance manifests, but more importantly strategies and recommendations for derailing diversity resistance and enhancing inclusion.

Author Biography

Kecia M. Thomas is Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology at the University of Georgia, U.S.A. She holds a joint appointment with the Institute of African-American Studies and is an affiliate of the Institute for Women's Studies. She is the Senior Associate Dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and is an elected Fellow of both the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the American Psychological Association.