Truth games of diversity: How hiring managers and human resource recruiters negotiate and learn about ethnicity and gender during recruitment processes

This study explores how hiring managers and HR recruiters negotiate issues of diversity and inclusion – specifically gender and ethnicity – during recruitment processes within a large Swedish corporation. Drawing on a Foucauldian approach, it examines the interplay of power, knowledge, learning, and truth in these negotiations. The study contributes to critical management research on diversity and inclusion in recruitment. Based on ethnographic observations of 20 meetings across seven recruitment processes, the article illustrates how informal learning and power/knowledge dynamics shape understandings of diversity and inclusion. Findings show that the recruiters and managers’ understanding of diversity in the workplace are narrow. They focus on surface-level diversity – primarily European nationalities and binary gender identities (counting men and women) – while overlooking more nuanced understandings. Although hierarchical differences between managers and recruiters pose challenges, informal learning does occur to some extent, as both parties influence each other’s views on diversity during recruitment. Nevertheless, opportunities for reflexive and critical learning are often missed due to prevailing power/knowledge relations, which hinder deeper engagement with diversity and inclusion.