Communicating inclusion: a review and research agenda on inclusion research in organizational communication

ABSTRACT

Inclusion is a topic of interest to many organizational communication scholars and is often implicit in research, but not fully articulated. In this paper, we review the published English-language organizational communication literature on inclusion. The major themes in the literature are inclusion as a discourse of difference, inclusion as voice and participation, inclusion-exclusion as tension, inclusion as communicative practices, and inclusion as a call to action. To begin to address the lack of explicit theorization of inclusion in organizational communication, we foreground a series of working principles derived from extant scholarship to guide future research and practice on critical inclusion. We suggest several areas for future research based on these principles and conclude with practical suggestions for communication scholars to practice inclusivity.

KEYWORDS:

• Inclusion
• inclusivity
• diversity
• reflexivity
• organizational communication

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Following the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer on May 25, 2020, people around the world protested and there was a renewed urgency to conversations about the work remaining to achieve racial justice, particularly in the United States.

2 We recognize that disciplinary boundaries are artificially constructed and will further discuss and problematize our conceptualization of organizational communication.

3 We emphasize that inclusion needs to be meaningful as many organizations claim to value inclusion or incorporate inclusive practices, when they are merely giving the illusion of inclusion, reifying the status quo, or even causing more damage to members of marginalized groups. We further consider this distinction in the discussion.

4 The journals that we searched are: Academy of Management Review, Annals of the International Communication Association, Communication Monographs, Communication Theory, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, Communication Quarterly, Communication Studies, Communication, Culture and Critique, Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion, Gender, Work, and Organization, Human Relations, International Journal of Business Communication, Journal of Applied Communication Research, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, Management Learning, Management Communication Quarterly, Organization Studies, Organization, Southern Communication Journal, Western Journal of Communication, Women & Language, and Women’s Studies in Communication.

5 We thank one of the anonymous reviewers who directed us towards research we overlooked.