Alternative diversity management: Organizational practices fostering ethnic equality at work

•We inductively identify organizational practices that foster equality at work.•Diversity management implies a rebalance of power in the employment relationship.•Practices reduce inequality through broadened norms on competencies and identities.•Practices target ethnic minorities as subjects and workers, avoiding essentialization.

Taking a critical, performative stance, this study aims to advance our understanding of diversity management enhancing ethnic equality at work. Relying on a multiple-case study, we inductively identify organizational practices that foster the valuing of multiple competencies and the ability to express multiple identities, two key organizational markers of ethnic equality advanced in the gender and diversity literature. Our analysis indicates that ethnic equality is fostered by practices that broaden dominant norms on competencies and cultural identities, and avoid reducing ethnic minority employees to mere representatives of a stigmatized social group. In contrast to ‘classical’ diversity management practices which focus on individuals’ cognitive biases toward out-group members, these practices redefine what is ‘standard’ in the employment relationship, hereby structurally countering ethnic inequality within organizational boundaries.