Social Construction of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Issues and Moving International Business Research Forward

Abstract

Purpose This scene-setting viewpoint aims to round up a two-part special issue focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in international business (IB). If the first part of the special issue focused on DEI blind spots and the juxtaposition between the DEI business case and the DEI social justice case, the second part critically discusses the social construction of DEI issues in IB settings and the role played by context in IB-DEI research.

Design/methodology/approach The authors discuss critically five IB-DEI research areas cover by the papers in this special issue. The first three examine gender in specific national cultures (i.e. Japan) and professional settings (i.e. academia), and look at making work-integrated learning more inclusive. The latter two address two particular DEI blind spots: neurodiversity and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and other sexual orientation (LGBTQIA+) community. Underlying our critical discussion of the five IB-DEI research areas is the issue of their socially constructed nature.

Findings Interrogating the social construction of DEI issues in IB settings calls for a shift from merely contextualising the local embeddedness of social identities and societal expectations/practices regarding DEI towards problematising power relations which reproduce structural barriers and social inequities that result in the exclusion (and sometimes oppression) of specific social identity groups. Such problematising, however, first requires stronger theorising of context and not merely contextualisation of existing DEI and IB theories.

Originality/value The contribution lies in linking the social construction and context of IB-DEI, underscoring the importance of both etic and emic research approaches. The authors offer a bird’s-eye view of how gender roles at work, women’s voices in patriarchal professional settings, work-integrated learning, neurodiversity and issues linked to the LGBTQIA+ community, opening new avenues for IB-DEI theorising. Following positionality statements of the guest editors in the first editorial connected to the first part of the special issue, the second viewpoint linked to part two of the special issue provides positionality statements by lead authors from each of the five papers in this special issue.