Diversity and inclusion for LGBT workers: Current issues and new horizons for research

• Author: Nick Rumens,Eddy S. Ng
• Date: 01 June 2017
• Published date: 01 June 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/cjas.1443

Diversity and inclusion for LGBT workers: Current

issues and new horizons for research

Eddy S. Ng*

Dalhousie University

Nick Rumens

University of Portsmouth

The organization literature on lesbian, gay, bisexual,

and transgender (LGBT) workplace issues is well over three

decades old, a milestone that warrants celebration and

ref‌lection given that the study of LGBT sexualities and

genders has not garnered enormous attention from

organization researchers. Indeed, this special issue is timely

in that respect, and particularly in the context of this journal.

While the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences has

published on LGBT issues such as in the arena of gay and

lesbian sports (Washington & McKay, 2011), the journal

has yet to publish research that explores LGBT issues in

different avenues of everyday life including the workplace.

As is typical of the organization scholarly literature more

broadly, gender has received greater attention in the journal,

evidenced in vibrant and important scholarly research on

organization masculinity (Mills & Mills, 2006), gender and

diversity management (Kirton & Greene, 2010; Loukil &

Yousif, 2016), and sexual harassment (Hart, 2012). From a

wider perspective, feminist organization studies literature

indicates that gender, in comparison to sexuality, has

typically attracted more scholarly interest. Even within the

organization and sexuality literature, which shattered the

container metaphor of organization by showing how

sexuality and organization are mutually constitutive of one

another (Hearn & Parkin, 1995), LGBT scholarship

comprises a relatively small part of this corpus of research.

Still, extant literature on LGBT workplace issues is

empirically and theoretically rich, and has kept abreast of

wider economic and sociocultural shifts that have (re)shaped

sexual and gender politics in specif‌ic cultural contexts

(Colgan & Rumens, 2015). As such, it is apposite that this

special issue lays the foundations within the journal for

future research on LGBT workplace issues.

A number of scholars have carved up the organization

scholarship on LGBT workplace issues into relatively

distinct phases or waves (Colgan & Rumens, 2015; Ozturk,

2011). For example, Maher et al. (2009) observed three

distinct phases: Early work (1800s-1972) focused on

homosexuality as a disease; the second phase (1972-1990)

targeted negative attitudes towards homosexuality (e.g.,

combatting homophobia, violence and discrimination

against LGBTs); and the third phase (post-1990) focused

on changing institutions to foster a positive climate in the

workplace. Consistent with this, recent research in this third

domain has also shifted from employment discrimination,

identity management, and career counselling for LGBT

individuals (Chung, Williams, & Dispenza, 2009; DeJordy,

2008; Ragins, 2008) to, amongst others, countering hetero-

and cisnormativity in the workplace, the adoption of

LGBT-friendly practices to create more inclusive

workplaces, and understanding the career choices of LGBT

individuals (Chuang, Church, & Ophir, 2011; Everly &

Schwarz, 2015; Köllen, 2016; Ng, Schweitzer, & Lyons,

2012; Lewis & Ng, 2013; Ozturk & Rumens, 2014).

In this literature, the persistence and pervasiveness of

hetero- and cisnormativity in the workplace continues to

concern organization scholars exploring the experiences of

LGBT workers (Köllen, 2016). Heteronormativity is

typically understood as a normative regime that requires

individuals to inscribe themselves into a hierarchical sexual

order (Warner, 1993), but it is also mobilized as an

analytical category to examine how heterosexuality acquires

a normative status in the workplace, against which LGBT

sexualities and genders are often cast as “abnormal”and

“unnatural”(Colgan & Rumens, 2015). Similarly,

cisnormativity has been coined as a term to describe a

normative regime in which it is “normal”for individuals to

be cisgender, whose personal gender identity is the same

as the sex category they were assigned at birth (Schilt &

Westbrook, 2009). As the contributions to this special issue

demonstrate, challenging normativity in the workplace can

be diff‌icult and sometimes at odds with current efforts made

by some organizations to cultivate LGBT diversity and

inclusion in the workplace.

The author gratefully acknowledges support from the F.C. Manning Chair

in Economics and Business, Dalhousie University in the preparation of this

Special Issue. We also thank Dr. Vishvanath Baba for suggesting and

making space for LGBT scholarship in the journal.

*Please address correspondence to: Eddy S. Ng, Dalhousie University,

Rowe School of Business, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4R2. Email:

edng@dal.ca

Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences

Revue canadienne des sciences de l’administration

34: 109–120 (2017)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/CJAS.1443

Can J Adm Sci

34(2), 109–120 (2017)Copyright © 2017 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 109