Unpacking the practices around diversity networks

This paper examines how the situated practices around diversity networks enact organizational inclusion. Building on a practice-based theory of diversity, we shift the analytical focus from networks as entities or instruments to the collective, discursive, embodied, and material practices through which inclusion becomes visible and actionable. Drawing on empirical research across two Dutch organizations, we identify three core practices: undoing otherness, appealing to managerial responsibility, and influencing policies. Rather than isolated acts, these practices constitute a nexus through which organizational social order is accomplished and at times temporarily reconfigured from within. We show how the practices in this study enact inclusion by discursively reframing marginalization, affectively mobilizing recognition, and materially intervening in policy processes. These practices operate within and against dominant organizational practices around meritocracy, professionalism, and managerial authority, navigating tensions between embeddedness and transformative intent. By theorizing diversity networks as sites of practice, our study contributes to diversity network scholarship by providing deeper insights in the complex balancing acts of networks to contest organizational social orders.