‘Managing’ diversity in the workplace:
representation of difference in The Office.
Paul Armstrong, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Paper presented at the 35th Annual SCUTREA Conference July 5-July 7 2005, University of Sussex, England, UK
Introduction
This paper critically examines the need to ‘manage’ diversity in the workplace, and questions the need for training on the ‘management’ of diversity. Instead, it argues the need for an understanding of, and an engagement with, the complexities of diversity and difference as experienced in the workplace, in its broader socio-cultural context. The basis of the critique is the media representation of difference in the workplace through an analysis of the popular television ‘spoof documentary’, The Office. It is important, therefore, to also argue the necessity of critically examining popular representations of diversity and difference.
Managerialism
The critique in this paper focuses first on the notion of managerialism. ‘Management’ has become an important part of the discourse of education and training. Its history, however, is not that long. The earliest discussion of management has been traced back to 1910 when a group of practitioners came together as expert witnesses to support a legal case against a railway company, who had argued that increased wages were a good reason for increasing prices. The argument to be developed was that prices could go down even if wages went up, when an organization was well managed. The lawyers felt that the witnesses would make more impact if they had all used the same term for this type of management, and one evening they all settled on the term scientific management. (Sears,1965). Taylor’s principles of scientific management dominated most of the twentieth century, and as the basis of Fordism, was generally accepted as the most rational and logical basis for a range of organizational structures, but particularly larger bureaucracies, which included education institutions.
However, as the century proceeded there was increasing disquiet with Fordism and its managerial principles. The critique came from a number of directions. From a radical perspective, the awareness of managerialism as a form of control had long been evident, but Foucault’s writings on discourses of power and knowledge gave new impetus to the critique of managerialism. Stephen Ball wrote an influential piece on management as ‘moral technology’ in his edited collection on Foucault (Ball, 1990). The contemporary development of competency-based training as a more efficient and effective means of management training drew attention to the shortcomings of scientific management. In the context of increasing accountability and control, there was seen to be a need for a new managerialism and administration, particularly in the public sector. Here the general principle was that promotion was based on being good at the job – teaching, nursing, policing. The paradox is, of course, that being promoted to managerial roles on the basis of performance of the job meant that those promoted moved away from what they were good at in order to undertake managerial roles for which they were – typically – ill-prepared. Hence, there was a renewed enthusiasm for management training. The newly introduced National Vocational Qualifications in the UK characterized its third level as supervisory, and Level 4 awards were expected to be predominantly managerial (and senior management competencies would be at Level 5). Whilst there were sets of generic management competence awards (at Levels 3 to 5), there was concern from a range of occupational areas that management skills and knowledge needed to be contextualized for their own industries, if not specialized.
At the same time, there were other forces at work, particularly stemming from women working in higher education (Deem, 1998; Deem and Ozga, 1997; 2000), critiquing managerialism from a feminist perspective, and arguing for the construction of new feminized forms of managerial roles. There was little doubt that women were discriminated against when it came to having the opportunity to take up managerial positions in what were largely masculine organizational forms that characterized the Fordist period, and thereby excluded from power. With the shift in thinking about the need for management training, there was scope for increasing numbers of women to train in management competence through both off-the-job and work-based learning. In short, we were experiencing the development of the ‘new managerialism’, reflecting neo-Fordism and the principles of neo-Taylorism.
Under this new regime, as teachers we were all expected to develop competencies that would enable us to engage in (in alphabetical order) anger management, behaviour management, change management, classroom management, crisis management, environmental management, information management, performance management, pupil management, quality management, resource management, stress management, and time management. The significance of this is the apparent ‘participatory democratization’ of managerialism, since this technical expertise in these management functions is shared among a global workforce, and no longer linked to hierarchical arrangements in a particular location (those who additionally were responsible for ‘people management’ determine their position in persistent hierarchies).
With the democratization has come equality of opportunities.
Gender is no longer a barrier to the performance of management functions, particularly as management training has been feminized – care management, and – as Furedi (2004) argues that we have moved from the political to the personal – emotional management.
Not only has politics been displaced by managerialism, but so too has professionalism. Avis writes:
In both managerialism and teacher professionalism there is the construction of technical expertise and an apparent distancing from wider political and social structures. Whilst managerialism represents the incursion of a capitalist market-oriented logic into educational relations, teacher professionalism was also prey to a form of technicism that implied the teacher qua professional had the skill and expertise to be an effective pedagogue. In spite of all its faults, there is a paradoxical way in which managerialism carries with it a democratizing impulse by braising questions of accountability. (Avis, 1996, p. 111)
Therefore, the first problem with managing diversity is the problem with managerialism, and its concomitant competence-based training.
Diversity
The second problem with managing diversity is the concept of ‘diversity’ itself. There is no politically neutral position on diversity, even in those psychological versions that focus on individualism and the meeting of individual needs. The attempt to de-politicize diversity is a political action. The dominant view of diversity is that it is essentially a ‘good thing’, and many textbooks on teaching stress the importance of ‘taking into account’ the existence of diversity in the classroom. There are lots of positives to be gained from the recognition of diversity in the classroom; it has potential for enhancing learning. However, it not only implies individualisation and specialization, but requires differentiation between cultures and people. The focus on difference as opposed to similarities can be fraught with difficulties. In its worst form, the learning is about discrimination, closely followed by encouraging – patronizingly - tolerance. In meeting special learning needs, teachers are trained in differentiation, to identify and meet individual needs in the context of equal opportunities. But this is challenging as well as expensive. In the way that managerialism has been infiltrated by an equal opportunities perspective, so too has diversity. In the workplace, diversity as equal opportunities is perceived to have many economic advantages in terms of maximizing the human resource potential in reaching organizational objectives: good recruitment and retention, improved working relationships in an atmosphere of inclusion, free from fear and allowing for personal development and growth, whilst remaining competitive both in the local and global economy
There is a more radical alternative, of course, which is to provide a cultural analysis of difference, not on an individual but collective basis. Brah (1996), for example, explores both theoretical and political shifts in thinking about, and debating, diversity and difference, though the analysis of gendered and racialized discourses. Other discourses of inequality can be included into the analysis, including class, religion, and cultures. In education, for example, this would be most closely expressed through critical pedagogy, though an exploration of the processes of schooling and cultural politics. A leading exponent of this is Giroux (1992), who has written about the spaces for de-centering the ‘canon’ and redefining the boundaries between class, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Following this line of argument, Usher and Edwards (1994, p. 217) state:
… the diversity introduced into the classroom is subsumed by the teleological goal of a radicalized democracy, thereby ignoring the way difference in the critical pedagogy sense is subject to the play of difference (and différence in the Derridean sense).
They then quote Brah (1992, p.140), to point out that the concept of difference is ‘associated with different meanings in different discourses’, and remind us that Foucault believed that ‘the recognition of difference does not necessarily result in the displacement of modern disciplinary power but rather in further refinement’.
At very least, this analysis takes us beyond binary oppositions in contemplating difference, and here I am adopting the perspective taken by Stuart and Thomson (1995) and arguing for a closer engagement with learners, their diversities and their differences, whilst problematizing the ‘other’. In both educational and workplace contexts, this requires a shift from the discourse of equal opportunities to that of equity or affirmative action. In comparing the discourses in educational reform in the UK and the USA, Maguire and Ball (1994) identify some significance differences between the two: in the UK reforms are closing down the possibilities for institutional and local democratic control of schools:
… schools are to be controlled in the interplay of central powers. The decisions of unelected quangos and competitive individualistic choice-making … schooling is no longer being articulated as a public service but rather as a state-regulated private good. Democratic and a participatory citizenship is replaced by individualized consumership Social justice is off the agenda. (Maguire and Ball, 1994, p.13)
At the same time, Maguire and Ball report, in the USA was becoming a communal issue, a ‘matter of collective concern’, new forms of democratic participation in decision-making, and restructuring based on social justice and equity.
Managing diversity
Writing from an Australian perspective, Strachan, Burgess and Sullivan (2004) have noted a policy shift taking place that parallels that of the UK experience: from collectivisim to individualism, from externally-driven social projects in the workplace to managerialist-driven initiatives. They note that the main process for implementing progressive and inclusive equity programmes is through human resource development and management policies that link the diversity of the workforce to organizational objectives. This drift away from distinctive affirmative action, underpinned in Australia by legislation to promote gender equity in the 1980s, is being replaced by ‘managing diversity’ training. The writers are hopeful that there will be a distinctive Australian version of managing diversity that will reflect earlier legislation. In light of my analysis of managerialism and diversity, I am not so confident that managing diversity training is the way forward.
What is diversity management? In a short paper of this nature it is not possible to do a thorough deconstruction of a training programme. There are many managing diversity training books available. A typical one is the handbook written by Clements and Jones (2002), which claims that diversity training is a special case, and makes explicit the assumptions made by the trainers, as well as the ‘business case for diversity’. The point is not to question the detail of the business case, but the very fact that it is necessary to make one at all. It is also important to recognize that the training is aimed at teaching about diversity rather than teaching for diversity. Teaching about diversity does not imply a value commitment for or against diversity, unlike teaching for diversity. It is difficult to find a diversity training programme that is committed to equity rather than equal opportunities.
There is also the issue about the value of the training programme in practice. Now this can be leveled at any management training course, and is not specific to diversity training. Presumably if an organization is willing to invest in its diversity of people, it will also want to know that it has adequately made a difference.
Representations of diversity and difference
The focus of attention of the need, or otherwise, to provide diversity training is to look at evidence from the workplace. However, this paper is based on a different kind of analysis – that of a popular cultural representation of the workplace, The Office. Before we take a critical look at this series, we need to say something about representation, as this paper is taking The Office as a representation of a workplace. At the denotative level, The Office is set in a television studio, and as such is a place of work, and its production is the result of workplace processes. However, it is the fictionalized setting that we are most interested in, and being a parody or a spoof, it is based around caricatures and stereotypes. In other words, we are interested in what the series connotes. As such, it is to be taken as a representation of a context and a series of plausible interactions which we can read as being constitutive of an office and office relations. It is mediated through language, including signs and symbols. Language is a system of representations. The analysis needs to be semiotic rather than linguistic if we are to understand how the representations generate meanings. There is no canned laughter to indicate that it is a situation comedy; it is produced as a fly-on-the-wall documentary. On the other hand, we know it is scripted rather than improvised, and we know that each episode is sequential, but is edited in to make each episode of 30 minutes (The Christmas specials were longer). It is set in Slough, a real town some 40 miles, west of London, and the opening titles are set against a recognizable office building in Slough, which we are meant to infer is where the office in The Office is situated. It is important that the setting and context are convincing if the readers of the televisual text are to accept that this is authentic, though the audience will construct their own meanings, which may or may not be those intended by the writers.
Work-based learning: the case of The Office
The Office was first shown in 2002, with a series of six episodes, followed by a second series of six in 2003, culminating in two Christmas specials first shown in December 2004. It was presented as a spoof fly-on-the-wall documentary examining modern office life, the dynamics and culture of the typical white-collar world. In the first episode we are introduced to David Brent (played by Ricky Gervais who co-wrote the scripts), the manager of the Slough branch of Wernham Hogg Paper Merchants. We find out in the first episode that the senior managers of the company are looking to merge the Slough office with the one in Swindon, and there by redundancies as a result. We also discover fairly quickly that Brent petty and pompous, and full of his own importance to a high degree of embarrassment. He thinks of himself as being very popular among the staff in his office, but the viewer quickly reads the signs that suggest he his not that popular, and not that trusted either. For the purpose of this paper, there is only space to focus on diversity issues and the way they are handled in two episodes – the first ones in each series.
Brent is prone to making ‘politically incorrect’ comments and jokes, and inappropriate use of innuendo, which he believes is okay because he is being humorous, claiming to be satirical or ironic. Gareth, Brent’s assistant manager, is the only person to find these jokes funny, and is found repeating them, but also worrying that they may not be appropriate, although his reasoning is always mistaken. Here is Gareth reflecting on the news of possible redundancies:
(Gervais and Merchant, 2002, p. 56)
Brent refers to ‘nutters’ and describes one of his employees as ‘mental’; there is also a strong hint of making derogatory remarks about gay people (‘poof’), and toward the end of the episode it culminates in an instance of racism involving an Asian employee (Sanj) whom Brent accuses of making a racist remark, which leads the documentary producer to ask about company policies on recruitment:
(Gervais and Merchant, 2002, p. 56)
In the first episode of the second series, the merger is taking place between the Slough and Swindon office, which is a little more diverse in terms of its employees, including a black employee and a wheelchair-bound woman. There are inevitably several embarrassing moments, particularly around the telling of racist jokes, the exposure of stereotypes, and the use of language:
(Gervais and Merchant, 2003, p. 40)
Conclusion
This paper set out to provide a critique of the idea of managing diversity, and to support the critique through an examination of the portrayal of an office through a spoof documentary that exposes the use of stereotyping and caricatures. The series also provides an example of a training session, and although its focus was on customer care not diversity training, it reflected general attitudes of both management and the workforce towards training, especially when ‘experts’ were brought in from outside, or sent from head office. To understand the anti-diversity discourse being used by the manager and his assistant, we have to understand it in the context of the person and the person’s situation, and because is fictional, we have to further consider the fact that it was scripted, almost certainly to draw attention to the lack of understanding of diversity. The assumption is made here that this discourse is introduced into the dialogue intentionally because it is not only an important characteristic of the caricature of the manager, but to provoke thought about its appropriateness in the contemporary workplace. However, at the same time, the series portrayed most of the employees be non-responsive to the sexist and racist jokes, the sexual innuendo and politically incorrect discussions around gay issues and disabilities. In the second series, there was some contention from those who had come from the Swindon branch, for whom the discourse caused offence. For those who worked in Slough, it was a routinized if uncomfortable part of the workplace culture that they had learned not to challenge. Though it was challenged by senior managers from head office, there was never any mention of law, codes of practice or even ethics, though company policies were mentioned and disciplinary action was threatened on one or two occasions.