Doctoral Dissertation - No zoo - Ethnic civility and its cultural regulation among the staff of a Finnish high-tech company

The doctoral dissertation focuses on ethnic civility as an alternative to managing diversity top-down in work organisations.

No zoo - Ethnic civility and its cultural regulation among the staff of a Finnish high-tech company

Marja-Liisa Trux (PsyL)

Venue: 10.4. at 12:15, Aalto University School of Management,  Runeberginkatu 22-24. (Chydenia building), hall H-324. Opponent: PhD Deborah Litvin, University of Massachusetts-Boston. Chair: Prof. Keijo Räsänen, Aalto University.

The doctoral dissertation focuses on ethnic civility as an alternative to managing diversity top-down in work organisations. Workplace ethnography discovered that the employees of a Finnish-based high-tech company enjoyed conditions of democratic management and were able to develop a 'voice' at work. Dramatic economic downturn did not lead to ethnicising the troubles everybody faced.

Several local and more travelling forms of culture are deployed by the full-heartedly cosmopolitan but passionately anti-diversity-minded software engineers. The study names and analyses these forms within a practice theory framework as tools of active and passive identity construction and management of social life.

The cultural critique produced suggests ways to avoid marginalisation of non-(yet)Finnish staff. Uncritically upheld iconic ideas about Finnishness would need to be relaxed for the benefit of all employees. The study also helps to reconceptualise the issue of diversity so that agency, process and power can be perceived, and it clarifies the issue of culture and cultural differences in organisations. Policy implication suggests a difference between legal anti-discrimination development led by public authorities - realised by employers, and identity development led by workers - encouraged by work organisations.

The doctorate belongs to the fields of organisation studies and cultural anthropology.

The doctorate will be published in series Acta Universitatis Oeconomicae Helsingiensis, A-358 (ISBN 978-952-60-1007-6) and also in electronicform at http://hsepubl.lib.hse.fi/FI/diss/. It can be purchased at KY-bookstore, main building of Aalto University School of Management, Runeberginkatu 14-16. Journalists can ask for free copies at the School's Communications department, tel. (09) 431 38621.

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