Marjolein Dennissen

91 Diversity killjoys? Interviews Complementary to the observations, I conducted 41 in-depth semi-structured interviews with various network members. Due to the spatial and temporal dispersed nature of diversity networkmeetings, the study of networking practices is complicated (Van den Brink &Benschop, 2014). It was impossible to attend every network meeting or to be present during small informal network moments (e.g., phone calls, conversations at the coffee machine). Sometimes network meetings occurred on the same time and I had to choose which meetings to observe. So interviews provided a second suitable method to capture accounts of diversity networking practices (Van den Brink & Benschop, 2014). The semi-structured, open-ended nature of the interviews allowed for a detailed reflection of network members on observed networking practices during network meetings, or networking practices of meetings/interactions that I could not attend for observation. Respondents were asked about the goals of the network, how and why they got involved, the network meetings, activities and events, with whom they were networking (other diversity networks, organizational management) and what their diversity network was doing to achieve their goals. The interviews lasted between 45 minutes and two hours and were transcribed verbatim. Documents Lastly, I have analyzed documents such as annual plans and meeting minutes, that possibly provide information about meetings that were not included in observations and about the follow up of previously made agreements. Data analysis In analyzing my data I aimed at identifying collective diversity networking practices that occur in the diversity networks in my study. My focal data consisted of the observation material. The observation notes were analyzed to build an account of diversity networks’ collective networking practices. In my analysis, I combined the empirical material from observations, interviews and documents to build an accurate account and understanding of diversity networking practices. I relied on an abductive approach (Van Maanen et al., 2007), going back and forth between theory and empirical material. An overview of the steps in building the data structure is provided in Table 5. The first round of coding consisted of three steps, which lead to the first order networking practices (Gioia et al, 2013). In this round, I started deductively, drawing on previous studies on networking practices. These studies identified several common networking practices such as negotiating, forming coalitions, socializing and sharing information (Berger, 2015; Van den Brink & Benschop, 2014). I found these individual networking practices useful to identify networking practices that occur in networks as a collective. These networking practices served as a first guide for the coding process. I have read through all empirical material (observations, interview transcripts, and