Theorizing and Practizing Organizational Culture and Diversity: A Case Study

Abstract

Modern organizations seem to have relative autonomy; what happens in organizations can be explained by looking at the changing balances of power, and the wider social figurations. Especially when it comes to processes of reorganization the increase in project- and target-oriented work often comes with diversity management. Using the process sociological perspective and the theory of subjectification through increasing self-organization, this paper refers to Norbert Elias’ work on social inequalities. This perspective will be applied to organizations, diversity and gender in order to investigate further aspects of new conditions of re-organization, subjectification and the shift towards flatter forms of organizational structure, conditions of gendering teamwork, the consequences for the cooperation of mixed teams, and the ways in which changes in the self-images and social make-up of employees go hand in hand with changes in the social structure of gender and employee relations more generally.