Communication Commons^™

Asset, Liability, Possibility: Metaphors Of Human Difference And The Business Case For Diversity, Jennifer J. Mease (Also Peeksmease), Brittany L. Collins

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Purpose – This analysis draws on interviews with 19 self-identified US diversity consultants and 94 diversity statements posted on corporate websites. The findings challenge existing literature that characterizes the business case for diversity as monolithic and wholly problematic for the way it constructs understandings of human difference. The authors accomplish this using metaphor analysis to demonstrate how business case arguments incorporate three metaphorical systems for thinking and speaking about human differences – as asset, as liability and as possibility. Given this diversity of metaphors, the business case does not construct human difference in a monolithic way, but in a variety …