Abstract (EN)

Conducting a diversity policy requires a strategic commitment as well as a social and organizational dynamics to support and encourage renewal of the company discourses, HR and managerial norms, programs and processes and, if applicable, practices. Thus, it cannot be reduced to a quite disorganized accumulation of punctual, sporadic, superficial or exclusively communicative and-formative initiatives. In fact, the elaboration and implementation of such a policy can participate in a strategic repositioning process of the organization and contribute to the reinforcement of its moral, pragmatic and cognitive legitimacy (Suchman, 1995; Barth, 2007; Bruna, 2013b,c). According to that, the implementation of a diversity policy can be analyzed as an organizational change process (Cornet & Warland, 2008), overtaking the laterality of ad-hocratic initiatives to embrace a transformative movement, based on a strategic, systemic, transversal and durable dynamics. Crossing a scientific literature review with qualitative data collected during an exploratory research (interviews, conversations, participative observation, observing participation), the present paper addresses the implementation of a diversity policy as an organizational change process (Bruna, 2013a,b,c). In the first section, the paper proposes cartography of the principal stakeholders concerned (and/or involved) in the implementation of a diversity policy and addresses the play-roles of a plurality of implicated actors, with divergent interests and differentiated and changing-with-time strategies. Nevertheless, as the State cannot be transformed through a mere administrative act, only (Crozier, 1979), the deployment of a diversity policy (that pretends to transform the organization’s discourses, norms, programs and managerial practices) cannot be imposed with a unilateral decision of the hierarchy (chairman and top-managers). Accordingly, the present paper addresses the socio-organizational system and the actor’s play-roles in which is embedded the implementation of a diversity policy. Following a strategic, polyphonic and dynamic perspective, this article mobilizes, in a second time, the interpretative paradigm of the sponsored organizational change process (Bruna, 2013c) in order to decrypt the phenomenology of diversity policy elaboration and implementation. This model refers to the creator process ideal-type, defined by Alter (2005), and is enriched by several sociological and managerial theories (Crozier & Friedberg, 1977; Lazega, 1994; Reynaud, 1997; Babeau & Chanlat, 2008, 2011; Lazega & al., 2008; Pichault, 2009; Autissier et al., 2012; Bruna, 2013c). The present paper is founded on a rich exploratory empirical research, based on a corpus of 35 interviews and several complementary informal conversations, with 35 key-actors involved in the elaboration, the driving and the implementation of diversity policies in several French public and private organizations (such as HR Directors and Mangers, Diversity Managers, Diversity Professional Experts and Advisors, Consultants…). Key-words: diversity policy, organizational change, sponsored organizational change process, learning, social regulation, “diversity endogeneisation”.