LAUSR

The growing heterogeneity of workplaces in the last few decades has turned the interest in workplace diversity into the bon-ton of many managers and organizational researchers. Recent social changes, including globalization, the growing number of multinational corporations, and the mass migration of waves of job-seekers and war refugees from developing countries to Europe and the United States (Appadurai, 1996), have accelerated the awareness of difference and prompted many HR mangers to seek ways to “manage” diversity—that is, not only to see diversity as something that has to be “dealt with” or “coped with,” but also to use it as a managerial tool for increasing production and creativity in work teams. Much of this literature has been led by American researchers who have sought to advance a reactive approach against discrimination and prejudice; only in the 1990s did critical researchers, inspired mostly by feminist, post-colonial, and/or post-structural theories, begin to seriously challenge this approach by exploring power relations related to diversity both in local and global contexts. The melting-pot approach, which encouraged assimilation into the hegemonic culture and which was the most accepted approach in organizations and in research, is now being increasingly replaced by a celebration of pluralism that does not necessitate putting aside one’s cultural ideologies and lifestyle. In this respect, the editors of The Oxford Handbook of Diversity in Organizations—Regine Bendl, Inge Bleijenbergh, Elina Henttonen, and Albert Mills—make a substantial contribution to these attempts to promote a pluralistic and critical understanding of diversity in the workplace. The Handbook is an extensive and impressive project that comprises 28 chapters by very wellknown, highly regarded authors in the field of diversity. Though it would have been much easier for the editors to present only studies employing a critical approach, with the aim of promoting this relatively neglected perspective (as compared to the popular and widespread American approach, which emphasizes diversity management), they have made a much-appreciated effort to integrate some positivistic and American-inspired chapters. While I personally feel more sympathetic to the critical perspective, I think that by integrating these positivist chapters the editors have gained at least two advantages: first, they have succeeded in avoiding the common confrontational discourse between critical and positivist traditions; second, they have done an excellent job in echoing the subject of diversity in their handbook by giving voice to varied theoretical perspectives and have thereby managed to embrace diversity as an ideology-in-practice—that is, not only “saying” and “telling about” diversity, but also actually “doing” diversity. To achieve this goal, the editors have included in their collection works by authors from around the globe (including, to name a few, Brazil, South Africa, India, and Pakistan) and introduced many 674867OSS0010.1177/0170840616674867Organization StudiesBook Reviews book-review2016