Marjolein Dennissen

54 The Herculean task of diversity networks and community building to prevent their members’ isolation. While these represent the individual and group levels of equality and are valuable for equality as such, the organizational level of inclusion remains underplayed. This has profound implications for the contribution that diversity networks can possibly make to equality. When inequalities in organizations go unchallenged, and no calls for substantial change of the organizational processes and practices (re)producing those inequalities occur, diversity networks are tamed and their value for equality will remain limited. Limitations, future research and practical implications When it comes to the limitations of this study, one limitation concerns the sample selection of the interviewees. I focused on board members as the shapers and drivers of diversity networks goals and activities. Yet, regular members of the diversity networks may have other attitudes towards the activities and outcomes at the individual, group and organizational levels. Future studies could include a broader range of members and non-members to sketch a fuller picture of the tensions and contradictions in the effects of the networks. A second limitation is the limited number of five networks in one organization. For a fuller comparative study of diversity networks, more organizations and more networks should be included. My three-level framework provides avenues for further research with regard to other diversity management practices. Despite the increasing attention to diversity management in organizations, our current knowledge about which practices are most effective in which organizational settings and contexts remains limited (Bendl et al . , 2015; Nkomo & Hoobler, 2014). My framework encourages a critical analysis that distinguishes between multiple levels of organizational equality, and allows to go beyond effects on the numerical representation of marginalized employees. A practical implication of this study is that simply establishing diversity networks in organizations does not suffice to bring about substantial change towards equality. Diversity networks can contribute to equality when they challenge inequalities in organizational processes, when minority cultures can be legitimate and visible within the organization, and when a wide array of individual career trajectories and unique contributions are valued. Furthermore, diversity networks are diversity management practices that focus on one single identity category. Current studies on diversity management practices, such as diversity networks, fail to theorize the heterogeneity within these identity categories. Researchers and practitioners alike could benefit from taking an intersectionality approach (Crenshaw, 1989; Rodriguez et al., 2016) to take into account multiple intersecting identities and how this impacts diversity networks.