I’ve been grappling recently with a rapidly evolving and loaded vocabulary — that's used in management, human resources and recruitment, as well as public sector discourse, all revolving around the notion of diversity. This key concept for organisations was borrowed from biology and ecology, later linking up with equal employment opportunity (EEO) on the one side and globalisation on the other. Diversity has been commercialised and commodified: there are agencies whose sole function is to analyse, disseminate and market the concept; diversity awareness sessions are a feature of most corporate training programmes; head of diversity or CDO (chief diversity officer) have become established as job titles. It’s interesting how one emblematic piece of jargon triggers the use of others: conversations and texts about diversity tend to be particularly jargon-rich, as witness HSBC: "diversity is a source of opportunity…competitive edge can be gained from the variety present in our workforce and customer base, and specific attention to market variation."
The Spencer Stuart Roundtable Diversity Practice proclaims, “…diversity is a 21st-century business priority - a driver for revenue… in order to leverage diversity, companies must diversify the top tier
of management.” Even the US Chief of Naval Operations assures: “We will empower diversity of thoughts, ideas and competencies…”
The core term itself is mutating: workers in western societies are now, we are told,
"living in multicultures in conditions of hyperdiversity".
As with all fashionable notions, however pervasive, this one has a limited shelf life, and there are signs that its sell-by date is approaching. As long ago as the early 1990s US HR manuals were discussing where diversity training had gone wrong and why the term difference was to be preferred. According to Christopher Metzler, Cornell University Professor, “…diversity has become a pejorative and must be replaced by the word inclusion, which [business executives] believe drives a different philosophy.”
Politicians, too, have finally realised that diversity can emphasise separateness and are substituting their alternative buzzword, cohesion. My own favourite replacement, though I doubt it will catch on, is the theorists’ hugely pretentious objective value pluralism. A much more likely candidate, and the cross-sector term du jour, is convergence.
Send your favourite buzzwords, jargon and new and exotic usages to tony.thorne@kcl.ac.uk
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