ABSTRACT
Nowadays, many organizations worldwide are characterized by increasing workforce diversity (Harzing and Pinnington, 2011). Depending on the specific economic, socio-political and cultural context, the prominent dimensions of such widespread workplace diversity might be age, ethnicity, gender, culture or many more (Prasad et al., 2006). Workplace diversity can be studied from either a subjectivist or an objectivist perspective (Prasad et al., 2006). This chapter is based on subjectivist thought which assumes that individuals make sense of the world through their social interactions. In short, they interpret reality. From this perspective, identity and belief are not individually fixed but fluid social concepts which emerge and are made stable through social interaction (Lawler, 2008). Research on workplace diversity might focus on the macro-societal, meso-organizational or micro-individual level; studies might have high or low power-awareness (Prasad et al., 2006). Often, HRM research has been critiqued for focusing solely on the individual level and for neglecting power (Al Ariss et al., 2014). For more inclusive perspectives, researchers should take multiple contexts into account and acknowledge imbalances of power, for example, the degree to which individuals are restricted in their agency by structural or institutional constraints (Al Ariss et al., 2014). Following this call, this chapter intends to link multiple levels of analysis when studying religious diversity and work and to reflect on imbalances of power, mainly the intersections between structure and agency in context. It does so by taking a performative perspective on religious practice and by linking it to wider contexts. Analysis is based on the case of two German research and development (R&D) companies whose workforce struggles with the meanings of religious practice. The contribution of this chapter lies in providing performativity as a new lens for analysing religious diversity and in suggesting the need to acknowledge intersections across multiple contexts for understanding the emic meanings of religious practice.
