Marjolein Dennissen

167 English summary provide all employees with a feeling of belongingness, value who they are, and give them a voice in organizational decision making. Board members indicate that diversity networks can function as a sounding board for the organizational management and provide them with solicited and unsolicited advice on diversity-related issues. In doing so, they are able to create the opportunity to address organizational processes that contribute to the exclusion of employees and call upon the organizational management to change these processes. Individual level -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Group level -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Organizational level ORGANIZATIONAL EQUALITY Career development Inclusion Community building Figure 1. A three-level framework of organizational equality Although diversity networks can contribute to equality on all three levels, my results also show that these contributions are not without contradictions. First, board members face various dilemmas. For example, on the group level, I observed a clear tension between attention to the exclusion of ethnic minority, LGBT or disabled employees in the organization and fear of the stigmatization that this attention could generate. This makes diversity networks reluctant to emphasize difference and exclusion, choosing to conform to the majority culture, for example by opening up membership to all employees, regardless of their social identity. In doing so, the idea of a safe space is lost and the contribution of a network to group-level equality is counteracted. Second, it is not self-evident that diversity networks contribute to equality on all levels. The board members under study tended to focus primarily on career development and community building. While these are valuable on individual and group levels, the organizational level is largely overlooked. This has implications for the value of diversity networks for equality in organizations. When structural organizational processes that create inequalities go unnoticed or unaddressed, the contribution of diversity networks to equality in organizations remains limited.