Marjolein Dennissen

92 The Herculean task of diversity networks documents) and identified fragments connected to these practices. This round of coding yielded fragments in which diversity network members collectively shared information, build coalitions, or engaged in negotiations. Then, as a second step in the first round of coding, I went through the data again and open coded (Bleijenbergh, 2013) possible other fragments of (potential) practices of collective networking. This helped to identify additional fragments in which network members collectively organized events, and fragments where members not only share information, but also personal experiences. Finally, I started to seek similarities, patterns and differences among the fragments (Miles & Huberman, 1994). The first round of coding resulted in the identification of several collective networking practices, including negotiations about the course of action of the network, discussions about which stakeholders to involve, meetings and discussions with organizational management, meetings among network members themselves, discussions about which activities to organize and which purpose those activities would serve, and which discussions actually took place during organized events. In a second round of coding, the data on sharing experiences, building coalitions, engaging in negotiations, socializing and organizing events, were coded again. This round, I particularly looked at how these networking practices were connected to increasing diversity and equality in organizations. Collective networking practices that were not related to stimulating diversity and equality were omitted from the material that is central in this chapter. Recoding the empirical material along these lines, resulted in the second order themes (Gioia et al, 2013) of five predominant diversity networking practices: undoing otherness, building alternative structures, organizing events, appealing to organizational responsibility , and shaping organizational policies . By categorizing these practices, I noted that they either serve to support network members or challenge the whole organization and management. This led to the aggregate dimensions (Gioia et al., 2013) of supporting network members and challenging the organization. Through these different steps in the analysis, I identified five main diversity networking practices and provided insight into how each practice contributed to (or perhaps hampered) organizational equality. In the following section, I present the five diversity networking practices that resulted from my data analysis. These diversity networking practices are not meant to be exhaustive, but selected because they most powerfully convey the collective action of the diversity networks in my study and show the various ways in which this collective action can contribute to organizational equality. To secure anonymity, fictitious names are used to depict the respondents.