Marjolein Dennissen

In this chapter, I adopt a practice-based approach to explore the collective diversity networking practices that occur in diversity networks. I define diversity networking practices as the collective sociopolitical actions of building, maintaining, and using relations in the workplace to advance organizational equality. Focusing on diversity networking practices allowsme to explore the collective action and political dynamics that take place in diversity networks, and how their networking potentially contributes to equality in organizations. I identified five diversity networking practices: undoing otherness, building alternative structures, organizing events, appealing to organizational responsibility, and shaping organizational policies. My analysis shows that diversity networks fulfill a twofold function. As collectives, they are able to create structures of support, solidarity and belongingness, and it allows them to appeal to managerial responsibility for diversity- and inequality-related issues and to influence managerial decisions on organizational policies. However, by emphasizing feel-good notions of diversity, diversity networking practices can (re)produce organizational and societal norms and discourses, contributing to organizational processes that perpetuate inequalities rather than challenging them.