Capítulo 31. Use of keywords and multimodal strategies to promote diversity in engineering websites
| Autor | Silvia Molina-Plaza |
| Cargo del Autor | Universidad Politécnica de Madrid |
| Páginas | 637-656 |
‒ ‒
CAPÍTULO 31
USE OF KEYWORDS AND MULTIMODAL STRATEGIES
TO PROMOTE DIVERSITY IN ENGINEERING WEBSITES
SILVIA MOLINA-PLAZA
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
1. INTRODUCTION: DIVERSITY IN COMPANIES
Engineering Corporate websites include a diversity section to give in-
formation of general interest to stakeholders and customers. This sec-
tion, like Corporate press releases, has a clear promotional purpose to
give a positive image of the company (Catenaccio, 2008, Wickman
2014).
Diversity and inclusion have become very popular in management theory
and practice. Diversity is understood in corporate settings as referring to
race, gender, sexuality, disability, age and class. The chapter below takes
a social constructional approach to difference, and mainly explores the
role of the Corporate social responsibility report (CSR) in how differ-
ences related to gender and race are structured into engineering compa-
nies. Websites reflect ideologies, sustained by language and visuals that
perpetuate implicit layers of meaning that are copy-pasted from other
texts and websites. Websites are also nowadays essential to create the
corporate identity, the self-image of a company, and include all strategic
measures and defining features that contribute to this desired image.
Corporations want to redress the balance and recruit staff members who
are not white, male, middle-class and heterosexual into their ranks to
create new opportunities for their organizations. Ashcraft (2011:8) sug-
gests that we should understand diversity as more than a set of pre-ex-
isting features. These features only become relevant if they are identified
as important by a company.
‒ ‒
Diversity management has become an increasingly well researched sub-
ject (e.g. Roberson and Stevens, 2006; Romani, Holck Holgersson and
Muhr (2016) ) including performance effects (Nielsen & Nielsen, 2013)
and other important factors motivating diversity and its management
(Bhawuk, Podsiadlowski, Graf and Triandis, 2002; Thomas, 1991).
Companies are seeking talent from a global talent pool and therefore
include in their website corporate social values (gender, sexual orienta-
tion, race, age, disability, etc.) to attract candidates in their professional
communication (Schnurr, 2013 and Schnurr & Zayts, 2017). There was
a liberal approach of doing nothing to reduce inequality until the 1970s
but little by little the emphasis on equal opportunities began (Point and
Singh, 2003).
It is fairly evident that the reality of women and LGTBI people continues
to be marked, in many cases, by discrimination, violence and hatred mo-
tivated by the rejection of sexual orientations, non-normative gender ex-
pressions and/or identities. This situation has been occurring in different
areas, ranging from educational, health, social, work and personal or
family issues; discrimination against both conditions affects rights as
important as freedom, dignity and equality, as well as the free develop-
ment of the personality. It limits, in essence, the right of people to show
themselves as they are, without fear of receiving rejection and without
external interference based on prejudice and stereotype.
There is no doubt that the term "diversity" is in vogue and with it the
challenge for many companies to allocate the necessary resources to en-
sure equal conditions among employees. With regard to sexual and gen-
der diversity, in today's society, which boasts of being sexually open,
different lifestyles and sexual conditions have led to the classification of
different types of sexuality that until recently were practically invisible
in the eyes of society: pansexual, demi-sexual, transsexual, etc., are
some of the terms that are increasingly present in everyday reality. En-
gineering companies want to create agreeable social spaces in which
every person gets along. Anderson’s (2004:22) created the term cosmo-
politan canopy to describe the model that companies want to project.
Unfortunately, reality seems to be far removed from this ideal.
Para continuar leyendo
Solicita tu prueba