Response: Commentary: “Medice, cura te ipsum!” a (mini) review of how white men are portrayed in diversity management research

We thank Armand Bam for his rigorous and thought-provoking commentary on our mini-review published in Frontiers in Organizational Psychology (Gildenhuys et al., 2025). His critique invites clarification of our methodological procedures, inferential scope, and theoretical positioning. We welcome this opportunity to specify the epistemological limits of our claims and to further articulate how paradox framing has a defensible place within a structurally grounded DEI discourse.

In this response, we address four key issues raised by Bam ((2025). First, we clarify the scope, design, and epistemological positioning of our mini-review. Second, we delimit our claims and specify what we do not argue. Third, we elaborate how paradox theory operates in our framework alongside structurally grounded and intersectional analyses. Finally, we discuss framing as a site of power and timeliness and outline directions for future empirical work.

Scope, design, and epistemological positioning

Bam (2025) argues that extrapolating from 26 full-text analyses to field-wide conclusions is methodologically untenable without triangulation, intercoder reliability, and a transparent codebook. We agree that interpretive boundaries must be clearly stated.

Our review was designed as a mini-review with interpretive analytic aims, not as a systematic review or meta-analysis intended to produce statistically generalisable claims. The epistemological orientation of the study is interpretivist: our objective was to identify discursive patterns in how dominant-group members (DGMs) are framed, not to estimate prevalence parameters for the entire field of diversity management research.

The analytic process unfolded in two stages. First, we conducted structured coding of 560 abstracts to map broad trends in DGM portrayal. Abstracts were used as scoping indicators because they explicitly signal theoretical orientation, problem framing, and normative positioning. Second, we conducted purposive in-depth analysis of 26 full texts selected for their substantive engagement with DGM representation, with the aim of typological refinement (i.e., distinguishing adversarial, dilemma-based, and paradox-oriented framings) rather than representational generalization. Our coding followed an iterative, reflexive procedure consistent with reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006), which prioritizes conceptual coherence and theoretical integration over numerical agreement coefficients. Recent methodological work further emphasizes that reflexive thematic analysis is a recursive, judgement-based approach that does not rely on intercoder reliability indices as markers of quality (Byrne, 2022; Herzog et al., 2025). Accordingly, our conclusions should be read as pattern-identifying and exploratory. We regard systematic sampling, expanded triangulation, and fully published codebooks as valuable extensions of, rather than corrections to, the analytic foundation we proposed.

Similar staged procedures are common in qualitative scoping work that combines broad mapping with in-depth thematic synthesis. For example, Herzog et al. (2025) conducted a scoping review of thematic analysis practice by screening titles and abstracts across multiple journals, followed by full-text assessment and qualitative synthesis. In addition, our interpretivist use of reflexive thematic analysis aligns with Byrne's (2022) worked example, which emphasizes iterative, judgement-based coding and conceptual coherence rather than intercoder reliability as the primary marker of quality.

Delimiting our claims

To avoid overextension, we clarify four boundaries. First, we do not claim that adversarial framing is universal within DEI scholarship; we identify a recurring tendency within a bounded corpus. Second, we do not suggest that adversarial framing is normatively illegitimate; structural critique remains indispensable in DEI research. Third, we do not attribute intentional bias to authors whose work we analyzed; our concern is with discursive effects and framing patterns, not with motives. Fourth, and directly addressing Bam's concern about the term “disenfranchisement”: our use of this term does not refer to numeric representation or structural power loss. It refers to the lived experience of DGMs who perceive themselves as excluded from ongoing DEI processes, even when they are, in principle, in agreement that structural inequalities must be addressed. It is the perceived exclusion from participation in DEI initiatives, and not a claim to equivalent victimhood, that our paper identifies as analytically and practically significant.

Our contribution is therefore conceptual: to ask how framing dominant-group actors in predominantly adversarial terms may shape possibilities for accountability, engagement, and coalition-building within organizations.

Paradox theory and structural analysis

Bam (2025) cautions that importing paradox theory without a structural lens risks depoliticizing identity and reproducing hierarchy. We concur that paradox must not function as a neutralizing device. In our framework, paradox refers to the simultaneous holding of structurally grounded critique and interdependence. It does not imply equivalence between dominant and marginalized positions, nor does it advocate moral neutrality. Rather, it recognizes that organizational change processes often require engaging actors who occupy structurally advantaged positions while maintaining explicit acknowledgment of power asymmetries. Our use of paradox was explicitly situated alongside cooperation theory and social dominance theory (Gildenhuys et al., 2025), both of which foreground inequality and hierarchy.

Recent work provides empirical grounding for this position. Creary (2025) demonstrates that when ambivalence about DEI work is unconsciously suppressed rather than consciously embraced, organizations enter a “vicious system” characterized by emotional splitting (i.e., the unconscious partitioning of complex feelings about DEI into binary, all-good/all-bad categories) followed by emotional polarization and, ultimately, intractable diversity conflict (Creary, 2025). Crucially, Creary shows that adversarial discursive environments are themselves generative of this vicious system: framing DEI participants as either supporters or resistors reproduces the very polarization that undermines equity work. Paradox framing, in our account, is not an invitation to abandon critique but a structural intervention in this dynamic, one that, in Creary's terms, begins to shift organizations from suppressing to consciously embracing the tension inherent in DEI work. Similarly, Toma et al. (2024) identify the resistance of advantaged groups as one of the core detrimental paradoxes of DEI, while simultaneously calling for research that examines how such groups can be brought into DEI processes as agents of change rather than as sources of backlash. Our mini-review responds precisely to this call.

We agree with Bam that paradox framing can, under certain conditions, drift toward depoliticisation. This risk underscores the need for empirical research examining when paradox framing sustains structural critique and when it attenuates it—a boundary condition question, not a categorical flaw in the framework.

Intersectionality and category simplification

Bam (2025) rightly emphasizes that “dominant group members” are not homogeneous and that intersectional differentiation is necessary. Our analytic typology inevitably simplified identity configurations to enable cross-text comparison, a methodological trade-off designed to establish an initial framing taxonomy across a heterogeneous literature. We acknowledge that future research should integrate intersectional analysis more explicitly to prevent reification of DGMs as monolithic actors. Such integration would refine, rather than invalidate, the typology we proposed. Recent work in this journal demonstrates that social-justice and gender-equity beliefs are shaped by race, education, and occupational trajectories in complex, intersectional ways (Jeanlouis, 2025), reinforcing the case for fine-grained, context-sensitive framing analyses that attend to variation within as well as between identity categories.

Framing as a site of power and of timeliness

We agree with Bam (2025) that framing itself is an exercise of power. Our review sought to examine how certain discursive configurations may inadvertently constrain the range of roles DGMs can occupy in organizational change narratives. We do not claim that reframing alone resolves structural inequality. Instead, we suggest that framing constitutes one dimension of how accountability and engagement are discursively structured. Our proposal of paradox-oriented framing should therefore be read as an analytic invitation, analogous to what (Creary 2025) terms “calling in” rather than “calling out,” to examine whether alternative discursive constructions alter patterns of resistance, defensiveness, or coalition formation. Whether such reframing enhances or undermines justice outcomes remains an empirical question, and one we regard as urgent.

On the question of timeliness: the article forms part of a larger, ongoing research project and was not designed to coincide with specific political developments. Nevertheless, Bam's (2025) observation that the current moment carries particular risks regarding the political instrumentalisation of dominant-group grievances is well-taken. We share this concern. It is precisely because adversarial framing risks feeding polarization, and because, as Toma et al. (2024) note, DEI initiatives face increasing resistance that must be understood and engaged rather than dismissed, that theorizing how DGMs are framed becomes an urgent analytic and political task, not a retreat from justice.

Conclusion

Our mini-review was intended as a conceptually generative, exploratory mapping of framing patterns within a bounded corpus. We hold that in DEI efforts, white men occupy a position of being simultaneously the problem and the problem-solver (which is, in essence, paradoxical) and that this structural tension deserves sustained theoretical and empirical attention. The framing choices that scholars make when portraying dominant-group actors are not neutral: they shape what roles those actors can plausibly occupy in organizational change narratives, and, as Creary's (2025) model of vicious and virtuous systems suggests, they may also shape whether DEI ambivalence is channeled into intractable conflict or into constructive coalition-building. We therefore welcome further work employing systematic sampling, expanded triangulation, and intersectional differentiation to test, refine, or challenge our typology. We are grateful to Bam for the rigor and urgency of his engagement, and for the opportunity to clarify our methodological boundaries and theoretical commitments. This exchange is itself an enactment of the paradox we advocate: holding critique and collaboration in productive, rather than intractable, tension.

Generative AI statement

The author(s) declared that generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.

Any alternative text (alt text) provided alongside figures in this article has been generated by Frontiers with the support of artificial intelligence and reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, including review by the authors wherever possible. If you identify any issues, please contact us.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Footnotes

Edited by: Charles A. Pierce, Oakland University, United States

Reviewed by: Iresha Donmanige, University of Wollongong, Australia