Marjolein Dennissen

16 The Herculean task of diversity networks control over goals, resources, behaviors, agendas, cultures, and outcomes (Acker, 2006). With their key focus on organizational power processes, critical diversity studies provide “unique and important ways to understand organizations and their [diversity] management” (Alvesson & Deetz, 2000, p. 10). Scholars have highlighted that diversity management practices, such as diversity networks, do not live up to their potential and even reproduce the very same inequalities they are meant to counter (Nkomo & Hoobler, 2015; Zanoni & Janssens, 2015). Although diversity networks are a widely popular practice in organizations, it remains unclear whether they work and, if so, how. By taking into account the underlying organizational processes, practices, and discourses that maintain and reproduce organizational inequalities, this work contributes to the diversitymanagement literature by building amore comprehensive understanding of how diversity networks are actually functioning as a diversity management instrument. In the following section, I review the current literature on diversity networks and consider how these studies frame the effects of diversity networks in organizations. Diversity networks: State-of-the-art The popularity of diversity networks in organizations is based on the widespread idea that participating in networks is an important career management strategy. Ample studies have shown that successful networking is associated with positive career outcomes such as job opportunities, promotions, higher wages, influence, and status (e.g., Borgatti & Foster, 2003; Granovetter, 1973; Kilduff & Brass, 2010; Mehra, Kilduff & Brass, 1998). Networks are considered to enhance and strengthen social ties, which increase satisfaction, build social support and embeddedness, and lower the risk of isolation (Bagilhole & Goode, 2001; Forret & Dougherty, 2004). Although involvement in networks is overall seen as beneficial, research has shown that networks can also generate inequalities (Ibarra, 1997; Kalev, Dobbin & Kelly, 2006; Konrad, 2007). Women and ethnic minorities were often excluded from white, male dominated networks, the so-called old boys networks (McDonald, 2011; Van den Brink & Benschop, 2014), and were not able to tap into the same resources, such as strategic network relations, powerful sponsors, and higher status connections (Burt, 1998; Forret & Dougherty, 2004; Rothstein, Burke & Bristor, 2001). This resulted in inequalities in job opportunities, information access, status, and support. Diversity networks for historically excluded social groups would present a strategy to counteract these inequalities and advance the positions of these groups within organizations (Foldy, 2002; Tomlinson, 1987). Emanating from the US, the first diversity networks were initiated grassroots-style by women and ethnic minorities advocating for equal opportunities and equal wages (Friedman, 1996). Currently, diversity networks exist for a much wider range of employee groups aiming to provide social inclusion and increase their numerical representation in the higher