Abstract:

Research on workplace inclusion often assumes supportive environments allow minority employees to be authentic. This article challenges that assumption by reconceptualizing inclusion as identity governance. Drawing on 41 interviews with LGBT professionals, we use the Covid-19 pandemic as a breaching experiment to theorize how inclusion regimes stabilize minority selfhood by producing identity equilibria: patterns of concealment, disclosure, or affirmation sustained by organizational forces governing psychological safety, normative expectations, and opportunities for impact. We find that the pandemic destabilized these equilibria and revealed an integration asymmetry where, as minority identity integrates into the professional self, regression becomes unacceptable. Further, we identify transcendence as a condition where minority identity becomes mundane rather than governing. By shifting focus from individual disclosure decisions to organizationally produced identity conditions, we offer a structural account of how organizations settle and shape minority selves.

Please choose your submission type: Full Paper

Primary Track: Identity

Keywords: Identity work;Organisational identity;Identity regulation / control;Diversity;Qualitative;qualitative

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Prof Kerstin Alfes