A repertoire of positives: the navigation of ambivalence in diversity work

Like other public and private domains, the health care sector sees an increase in diversity and inclusion ideology, initiatives, plans and strategies. Diversity workers, the people who execute these efforts or engage with diversity in (parts of) their work, are crucial in embedding diversity within these organizations. This thesis explores how diversity workers experience, execute and contest diversity work within the Amsterdam University Medical Centre by deploying a multi-sited ethnographic approach (Marcus, 1995).This is done through conversations with diversity workers, analyses of policy documents and public displays, and attendance at a couple events focused on or related to diversity work. The diversity workers can be characterized as tempered radicals (Meyerson & Scully, 1995), as they simultaneously work in and on the organization in which they seek to implement their diversity endeavors (Kirton et al., 2007). As they try and further their diversity agenda, they experience resistance of this same organization (Ahmed, 2012). This results in an ambivalent state of being, characteristic to tempered radicalism, which they try to navigate through an interdependent repertoire of positives: strategic, optimistic, and authentic positivity. This inherently acquired expertise gives the diversity workers at Amsterdam UMC epistemological advantages on the diversity dialogue within the organization and should therefore be seen as a vital and valuable source of information.