(Un)clear Relationships?

The relationship between corporate social responsibility (CRS) and diversity management (DM) features heavily in current debates. Analysis has sought either to establish the commonalities and differences between DM and CSR or to discuss, for example, their interconnection as regards processes of sensemaking. Although it has been repeatedly stressed that no uniform definition exists both in relation to DM and to CSR and that, in fact, from an empirical perspective, diverse notions of DM and CSR prevail, these conceptual differences with regard to strategic direction and tactics of implementation have been for the most part disregarded. In the following text, this very diversity of notions will be explored from the perspective of reflexive diversity research, and I wish thus to inquire into the specific connections between DM and CSR. In this regard, I distinguish, following Michel de Certeau, between superordinated strategies and operative tactics and presume, in the same way as Michel Foucault, that they possess a dispositive polyvalence, in other words, that one and the same phenomenon can be an element of different strategies or tactics. The aim of this analysis is to contribute to a (more) differentiated definition of the relationship between CRS and DM.