Understanding Workplace Empowerment as Inclusion

This article situates workplace empowerment within the broader principle of inclusion and offers a historical analysis of the discourse of difference in America since the 1930s with a view to developing a deeper understanding of the dynamics of empowerment in the American workplace. The article identifies two primary themes, namely, discrimination and diversity, as constituting the discourse of difference and investigates the differing historical contours of these two themes over the period of this study. The article argues that, during different years, these two themes came to attain different levels of salience that held important implications for inclusion and empowerment in the American workplace.