Marjolein Dennissen

111 Diversity killjoys? involvement and input of employees themselves is essential, and HR should therefore make a continuous effort to work together with employees and employee initiatives such as the disability network. Being organized as a collective, network members are able to tap into the lived experiences of individual employees and translate their struggles to organizational (HR) management. As a network they are able to collect these experiences and make a collective case. In doing so, a network can detach themselves emotionally from individual cases but without losing the emphasis on the lived experiences of real employees. By engaging in the networking practice of shaping organizational policies, network members can become professional negotiation partners to (HR) management. This allows them to challenge the organization to assess and change failing organizational policies that lead to the exclusion of employees. In this section, I showed how diversity networks are able to challenge the organization by engaging in the diversity networking practices of appealing to organizational responsibility and shaping organizational policies. Being organized as a collective network, provides network members with an entrance to the organizational management and allows them to discuss issues of organizational inequality. Their collectivity gives them voice and opportunities to negotiate and influence managerial decision making on diversity- and inequality-related topics. Discussion The aim of this chapter was to come to a better understanding of how in-company diversity networks as collectives (net)work to advance equality in organizations. Drawing on a practice-based approach (Gherardi, 2009; Janssens & Steyaert, 2019; Nicolini, 2009), I explored the collective diversity networking practices that occur in diversity networks. I extended previous work on diversity networks by providing a more comprehensive understanding of the (subtle) behaviors and dynamic, political processes of collective networking. By doing so, I contributed to the diversity network literature in two ways. First, I identified and analyzed diversity networking practices that diversity networks engage in to stimulate organizational equality. Second, and as a result of the first contribution, I have shed light on the sociopolitical processes that diversity networks collectively engage in when they network for equality. By introducing a practice-based approach as a novel perspective to study diversity networks, attention shifts to how networking is accomplished, analyzing it as a way of networking, rather than focusing on “the substance of a [diversity management] practice” ( Janssens & Steyaert, 2019, p. 530). As such, this study extends previous literature by providing an in-depth understanding of how diversity networks can either sustain or counteract inequality in organizations.