Workshops: Room 8
Workshop sessions involve extensive interaction between presenters and participants around an idea or hands-on experience of a practice. These sessions may also take the form of a crafted panel, staged conversation, dialogue or debate – all involving substantial interaction with the audience. [45 min. each]
Connecting the Pieces: Understanding the Diversity Jigsaw
Workshop Presentation Dale Park
We are all diverse, created by dimensions of individual difference that connect and intersect. Diversity doesn’t exist in the “otherness” or “difference” of someone else, it exists in all of us to create our sense of belonging and our unique identity. The Connecting the Pieces film and Diversity Jigsaw resource articulate the dynamics of diversity and person centred care while also providing an accessible explanation of intersectionality. The Diversity Jigsaw illustrates the dimensions of individual difference that help shape each person’s identity and sense of belonging. It promotes them as assets and challenges people to remove deficit approaches to difference from their practice. This interactive workshop will demonstrate the value in implementing an intersectional approach when developing services and working with people to achieve social justice. It will build the capacity of participants to offer a truly person-centred service that understands and responds to the cultural history of individuals, the prejudice and exclusionary actions experienced and the breadth of clients' diversity, interests, preferences and needs. Participants will use the diversity jigsaw to consider how dimensions of individual difference intersect to build a person’s unique identity and sense of belonging.They will be supported to recognise and respond to potentially conflicting identities and the challenges that people can experience when reconciling these identities. They will work through questions that challenge them to reflect on their current practice and how to create an inclusive environment that supports, admires, appreciates and celebrates people’s identities.
Workplace Identity Construction: An Intersectional-Identity-Cultural Lens
Workshop Presentation Lize Annie Eliza Booysen
While the field of workplace identity studies is nascent and fragmented, it has matured in the sense that there are calls for the integration of divergent perspectives across the field and paradigmatic divides (Miscenko & Day, 2015; Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003, Watson, 2008). Little attention has been paid to integrate intersectionality (Crensaw, 1991), a concept derived from critical feminist thought, into workplace identity research. Intersectionality is useful in conceptualizing work identity because it recognizes the simultaneity of the different social categories individuals belong to that inform their identities and also the ways they structure organizations and people’s experiences within them (Andersson, 2008; Roberts & Creary, 2013). Identity work is also relatively new in cross-cultural research, which tends to focus mainly on national culture or cross-cultural comparisons (Klarsfeld, Ng, Booysen, Christianson & Kuvaas, 2016). Consequently, the importance of super-group levels identity influences, such as national culture and societal contextual factors is also not sufficiently explored in workplace identity research.This workshop will extend our thinking on workplace identity by focusing on intersectionality to highlight the significance of an individual’s intersections of social locations in the workplace embedded in socio-historical and political contexts. Second, by focusing on the influence of national culture as a macro contextual factor, adding a cross-cultural leadership perspective on how individuals navigate their identities at work. We will explore: How does identity work intersect with cross-cultural research? How does identity work intersect with intersectionality? Can intersectionality be used to also unearth privilege and not only marginalization?
