Bringing History In: The Management Of Ethnic Diversity In The Shadow Of German Nazi-Past

Diversity and equality concerns and patterns of disadvantage in the labour market are historically constructed, and they draw the framework of diversity agenda at the national and organizational levels. Therefore, attempting to understand the notion of managing ethnic diversity in Germany requires the acknowledgment of the importance of history in diversity management research. Drawing on data from a company case study and thirty stakeholder interviews, this article revealed the generative influence of history on the diversity management agenda. We demonstrated that the Nazi-past, and particularly the treatment of this past, casts a shadow on contemporary diversity management efforts in Germany, generating several points of resistance and blind spots in dealing with ethnic diversity of the workforce in a creative, resourceful and fair way. It is the ongoing and current treatment of history, rather than the history itself as an essential reality, which shapes how we generate meaning and frame life. We illustrated that the post-holocaust collective guilt, which must be seen as the treatment of the German Nazi-past and not as the history itself, shaped the contemporary diversity management agenda in such a way that race related issues are excluded from it. For instance, the discrimination topic is marked by a collective silence, which affects the field of diversity management as well as the organisational adoption of the diversity management concept in Germany.