Phd PROGRAM ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY AND
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PhD PROGRAM ECONOMIC SOCIOLOGY AND LABOUR STUDIES – 30th cohort DOCTORAL THESIS BRINGING LESBIAN- AND GAY-FRIENDLINESS INTO THE CORPORATE WORLD: THE DIFFUSION OF CONTROVERSIAL DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT PRACTICES THROUGH THE LENS OF INSTITUTIONAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP SPS/09, SPS/07, IUS/07, SECS-P/07, SECS-P/10, SECS-S/04, M-PSI/06 PhD CANDIDATE SIMONE PULCHER SUPERVISOR PROF. MARCO GUERCI PhD COORDINATOR PROF. GABRIELE BALLARINO A.A. 2016-2017 The PhD program Economic Sociology and Labour Studies (ESLS) (30th cohort) stems from the collaboration of four Universities, namely Università degli Studi di Brescia, Università degli Studi di Milano, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca and Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro”. The University of Milan serves as the administrative headquarters and provides the facilities for most teaching activities. 2 Acknowledgements My first acknowledgement must go to my supervisor, Prof. Marco Guerci, for having shared with me the effort of a research project as risky as challenging. His intellectual vigour and work ethic, coupled with his patience and supportiveness made this research journey fulfilling and enriching, not merely in academic terms. I also wish to thank: Professor Luca Solari for his availability and crucial help for the set-up of this research project. Professors Ballarino, Meraviglia and Squazzoni for their work as coordinators of the ESLS Program and their valuable feedbacks during our project colloquia. The NASP project for funding my PhD. Paolo Iacci, for his sharp intellect and wit. All the participants that made this research possible, with a special thanks to Igor Suran, from whom I have learned many things I could not find in textbooks. Thomas Köllen, new friend and inspiring scholar. Professor Regine Bendl and all the Institute for Gender and Diversity in Organization at WU, Vienna. All my PhD colleagues, whit whom I have had the privilege to share this journey. Ju-gitzu and Margherita. The Dahü F.C. My family and my friends. 3 Table of contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. 3 Table of contents ..................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 5 1. Literature review ............................................................................................................... 10 1.1 What do we mean by diversity in organizations? ...................................................... 11 1.2 From equal employment to diversity management .................................................... 15 1.3 The diffusion of DM .................................................................................................. 21 1.4 Sexual orientation and gender diversity in organizations .......................................... 23 1.5 The Italian context ..................................................................................................... 32 2. Theoretical framework ...................................................................................................... 40 2.1 The institutional analysis of organizations ................................................................ 41 2.2 Institutional change and institutional entrepreneurs .................................................. 49 2.3 Research gaps and objectives of the present study .................................................... 56 3. Research design and methodology ................................................................................... 58 4.1 Design and method .................................................................................................... 58 4.2 Data analysis .............................................................................................................. 68 4. Findings ............................................................................................................................ 73 4.1 The top-down process of adoption of LG-friendly practices ..................................... 73 4.2 The bottom-up process of adoption of LG-friendly practices ................................... 79 4.3 Parks as institutional entrepreneur ............................................................................. 83 4.4 Trade union confederations’ LGBT-rights departments as institutional entrepreneurs ........................................................................................................................................................ 88 4.5 Relations between Parks and trade unions ................................................................. 93 5. Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 97 5.1 Two types of institutional entrepreneurs ................................................................... 97 5.2 Implications for practitioners ................................................................................... 102 6. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 105 6.1 Final remarks ........................................................................................................... 106 6.2 Limitations and future research ............................................................................... 110 References ........................................................................................................................... 113 4 Introduction Overview of the phenomenon The adoption of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender1 (LGBT)-friendly policies by organizations in Italy is a very recent, on-going phenomenon and represents a privileged opportunity for the study of organizational institutional change in institutionally complex environments. First examples of the implementation of practices explicitly addressing heterosexism by Italian organization date back just to the late 2000s and, despite some pressure from the European Union, the Italian institutional context apparently did not provide those organizations with the institutional opportunity to embark in such a change. Internationally, the inclusion of a diverse workforce and related diversity management practices have increasingly received attention from both management and organizational research (see Shore et al., 2009) and business consultancies, which have started identifying diversity management as a saleable expertise to organizations, together with the promise of gaining competitive advantage through a higher degree of inclusion (Hunt, Layton, & Prince, 2015; Smith & Yoshino, 2013). In recent years this promise increasingly includes the inclusion of LGBT employees (e.g. Hewlett & Yoshino, 2016). 1 The management practices discussed in this article almost exclusively address lesbian and gay issues. The widespread usage of the term LGBT (or GLBT) for naming the target group of these practices in the Italian business context as well as internationally lumps together minority statuses on terms of employees’ ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’, although both phenomena are not directly linked, and transgender issues are mostly totally ignored. I make use of the term LGBT as the most adopted in the literature I quote, as well as by the participants to this study. I am nevertheless conscious of the limitations this approach may entail (see Köllen, 2016b, for this debate). 5 How previous literature has dealt with the topic Since diverse sexual orientation in the workplace may involve stereotyping, stigma and organizational demography, organizational and management research on sexual orientation diversity and diversity management primarily focuses on analysing the intensity and shape of heterosexism and discrimination in the workplace, antecedents and consequences of lesbian and gay employees’ way of dealing with their sexual orientation at work (e.g. Lloren & Parini, 2017; Ozturk & Rumens, 2014), direct consequences of discrimination (Ragins & Cornwell, 2001), and the impact of the presence or absence of certain diversity management initiatives on homosexual employees’ wellbeing or working behaviour (e.g. Bell, Özbilgin, Beauregard, & Sürgevil, 2011; Huffman, Watrous-Rodriguez, & King, 2008) or on the organizations’ performance, reputation or standing (see Anteby & Anderson, 2014; Badgett, Durso, Kastanis, & Mallory, 2013; McFadden, 2015; Ozeren, 2014). Another research stream focuses on the way sexual orientation diversity management became operative in management practice, and on its international diffusion. The first who have implemented specific management practices regarding gay and lesbian employees were US companies in the early 1980s. This phenomenon has been studied by a first wave of institutional scholars who combine institutional and social movement theory to document the antecedents and mechanisms of the process of adoption of such practices. Creed and Scully (2000) and Creed, Scully, and Austin (2002), describe the strategies adopted by LGBT activists both inside and outside the organization to create narratives and shared identities with straight colleagues to foster the adoption of such practices. Those strategies relied on the exploitation and recombination of contradicting institutional logics (Friedland & Alford, 1991;