Otherness at large

The spectre of ‘otherness’ has been haunting Western organizational landscapes for a long time. Relationships between dominant majority groups (typically Euro-American/Western men) and ‘different’ or ‘other’ social identity groups (e.g. women, African-Americans, gays, Latinos, etc.) have been recognized as central issues affecting the advancement, legitimacy and survival of organizations themselves. These questions of otherness have further intensified as national boundaries become more permeable and workplaces are swamped by the tides of diversity and cosmopolitanism. In sum, the currents of globalization have altered the contours of difference and otherness, simultaneously rendering them more immediate, more exciting and profoundly more problematic.