Marjolein Dennissen

20 The Herculean task of diversity networks Overall, LGBT networks are considered to be valuable instruments in providing safe spaces for LGBT employees. LGBT networks are seen as important employee voice mechanisms that offer opportunities to influence organizational practices and contribute tomore LGBT-inclusive workplaces. However, a few studies have questioned their beneficial effects. In addition, embedded in an organizational context, LGBT networks are expected to be effective with regard to the organizations’ bottom line. This expectation may also hamper their effectiveness to contribute to equality. From this review of the literature, I learned that it is certainly not self-evident that diversity networks contribute to organizational equality. Although applauded in many organizations, diversity networks have no consensus of benefits in the literature and are not without criticism. The core of this critique is that diversity networks are organized around a certain social identity and, thus, merely emphasize and increase isolation (Friedman, 1996; Gremmen & Benschop, 2012; McFadden & Crowley-Henry, 2017) rather than diminish inequalities as intended. Moreover, diversity networks lack power to actually challenge the status quo in organizations (Foldy, 2002). Although the field of diversity network studies is increasing (cf. Foldy, 2019; Greene, 2018; Welbourne et al., 2017), critical diversity perspectives on diversity networks that specifically focus on power and inequality are rare. Apart from a few notable exceptions (e.g., Bierema, 2005; Colgan, 2016; Foldy, 2002, 2019), studies on diversity networks tend to mirror the “feel-good” view (i.e., “ If your company doesn’t have a (…) network, it should ” , Catalyst, 1999, p. 1) that has been ascribed to mainstream diversity management research in general (Hoobler, 2005; Prasad & Mills, 1997). The problem with this celebratory rhetoric of diversity networks is that conflicts, tensions, and ambiguities are overlooked. As argued earlier, organizational diversity management is a complex, contextual, and power- laden endeavor (Ahmed & Swan, 2006; Bendl et al., 2015; Prasad & Mills, 1997), and as I show in this dissertation, accomplishing organizational equality by means of diversity networks is more complicated than simply starting a network (Bierema, 2005). Taking a critical diversity perspective on diversity networks, I shed new light on previously underexplored areas of diversity networks as diversity management instruments. In the next section, I explain these areas in further detail. A critical diversity perspective on diversity networks The aim of my dissertation was to study how diversity networks contribute to equality in organizations in order to come to a better understanding of the functioning of diversity networks as diversity management instruments. To date, the implications of diversity networks for organizational equality remained an understudied terrain. To understand these implications, it is essential to develop a notion of diversity, equality, and inequality as socially constructed. As explicated in the previous section, within critical diversity studies, scholars