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United in Diversity? Disciplinary Normalization in an EU Project

Labour Studies, Laurentian University/School of Business, Sudbury, ON, Canada and Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lappeenranta, Finland, pahonen{at}laurentian.ca, pasi.ahonen{at}lut.fi

Janne Tienari

Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland

Managing diversity has emerged as a timely issue in organizations operating in the global economy. We contribute to the critical literature on diversity and its management in transnational organizations by exploring ways in which diversity is discursively (re)constructed in a European Union Framework Programme project. We draw on Michel Foucault’s insights on the specificity of the relations and mechanics of power, and the connections between disciplinary power, normalization and knowledge. We conceptualize the EU Framework Programme system as a disciplinary apparatus (dispositif)—a network of time-, place- and field-specific disciplining discursive practices—and approach diversity in an EU project as a technology of normalization. Managing diversity becomes thus understood both as an enabling and a limiting exercise of disciplinary power.

Key Words: discourse • diversity • European Union • Foucault • power • transnational cooperation

Organization, Vol. 16, No. 5, 655-679 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1350508409338434


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