Vrije U. Amsterdam, School of Business and Economics, Netherlands
Organizations are increasingly addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues in their organizations. Although DEI efforts are made to address concrete inequalities in the workplace, the way these interventions are experienced and interpreted can be polarizing in the sense that organization members sometimes start to form bi-polar opposite opinions and beliefs of DEI issues that are difficult to reconcile. In this study, we examine how issue polarization emerges. We do this by studying how individuals make sense of their firm’s commitment to racial injustice while inhabiting a liminal space that was triggered by the critical event of George Floyd’s murder. Our findings describe the various activities that organization members engage in to make sense of such issues, identify additional paradoxes that emerge through these sensemaking processes, and explain how sensemaking activities break down, which can lock individuals into a polarized view on an issue. In doing so, our study offers several contributions. First, we showcase how critical events create ruptures and trigger liminal space-times bringing attention and action to socio-political issues. Second, we extend a constitutive approach to polarization and showcase how engagement with issues that are polarizing can be discussed and reflected on during such liminal space-times. Third, we showcase how employees respond to their firms' stance on a socio-political issues with outcomes such as issue polarization or belief updating.
