Locating Class in Organizational Diversity Work: Class as Structure, Style and Process

The topic of ‘class’ does not always make its way into the discussion of diversity nor into the formation of social identity-based caucuses in the workplace. Class sometimes enters covertly, with the awkward labels ‘levelism’ or ‘statusism’. These labels divert attention toward local aspects of organizational hierarchy and away from the broader societal significance of class as deeply rooted and enduring stratification. In the United States, people often deny the existence of ‘class’ as a factor in life chances, because concepts like social mobility and equal opportunity are so strongly promulgated (if not always strongly believed when closer scrutiny is prompted). In a pilot of a survey with questions on how ‘class background’ affects promotion prospects in a company, respondents thought the questions meant what ‘classes’ they had taken, in school and on the job. They just did not know how to approach the question and the word ‘class’ (Scully, 1993). Even as Americans insist on ignorance about the topic of class, they turn out to be exquisitely attuned to detecting class, as Rainwater (1974) showed in a study in which participants viewed videos of people talking and correctly identified their income bracket from accent, style and a thousand nuanced indicators. There is a strong ambivalence about class in the United States. There is a denial born of the wish that we had equality of opportunity, even while there is a laser-sharp attention to class that filters how we react to one another and contributes to reproducing [Page 432]inequality. In this chapter, we will emphasize that class is a vital dimension of social identity, which has been a focal concept for organizational diversity, but moreover, following the critical tradition, class is a vital dimension of work and life in organizations, part of the very fibers of organization. Class is at once very much a dimension of diversity and unlike any other dimensions of diversity, because it prompts re-examination of many fundamental premises not just of organizations but of capitalism, meritocracy and distributive justice.

Social scientists have a myriad of approaches to class. Passionate political opinions can attach to treating ‘class’ in one way or another. We present three ways of thinking about class, distilled from research in sociology, political economy, anthropology and critical management studies: class as structure, class as style and class as process. We do not seek to pit these approaches against one another. Rather, we offer them as tools or frameworks that might be particularly relevant for researchers and practitioners concerned with diversity in organizations. For each approach to class, we open by examining its meaning, evolution and usefulness. We then offer three particular aspects of each approach that prompt questions or issues of special relevance for diversity in organizations. The questions arise throughout each section, and, for convenience, are summarized in Table 17.1. The class-as-structure approach receives the longest treatment, as it is historically antecedent and foundational to the other two approaches. Throughout this chapter, we emphasize that class is more than an individual trait (even more than a set or markers or a social identity) and must be understood as having a structural basis and having both material and political implications for members of all classes and for organizations.

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