Introduction

The financial crisis of the late 2000s and the social movements that emerged in its aftermath placed a spotlight on the inequalities of the economic system, whose strains were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic (Dobusch & Kreissl, 2020; Murshed, 2022). Recent global social movements such as #metoo and Black Lives Matter (see, e.g., Lee & Murdie, 2021; Nkomo, 2021) have called for greater social justice while pointing to systemic discrimination and inequalities. Furthermore, democracies around the world are facing increasing internal and external pressures while war and violent conflict continue to afflict many regions. All of these global problems are a spur for activists as well as academics to explore forms of ‘good’ or ‘ethical’ organizing. In the field of business ethics, these challenges are debated, for instance, by drawing on Levinas (1998, 2006) to ask whether notions of organizational ethics focusing on its affective and corporeal base are compatible with forms of organized ethics based on rules and norms (Rhodes, 2023). The latter is conceptualized in terms of organizational virtues (Dobson, 2022; Moore & Beadle, 2006) as a form of ‘ethical organizing’ (Yazdani & Murad, 2015) that—inspired by MacIntyre (1985)—has been applied to look at how organizations pursue a higher purpose than simply accumulating capital by not only encouraging but also enacting virtuous practices.

In particular, the way in which organizations deal with diversity can be conceptualized as a question of ‘ethical responsibility’ (see Rabl et al., 2020, p. 545). This responsibility is based on values such as promoting fairness, the redressing of historical and institutional discrimination as well as ensuring greater equality of opportunity, all of which underpin the moral case of diversity (see, e.g., Brennan, 2022). These ethical considerations cause us to question the status quo of contemporary organizations, which are still characterized by a rather homogeneous workforce (e.g., Grund & Westergård-Nielsen, 2005; Petersen & Dietz, 2005). In fact, it can be concluded that measures to increase diversity have not lived up to their own promise of enhancing the participation of marginalized individuals (Bendl et al., 2008; Holck, 2018; Janssens & Zanoni, 2014; Köllen, 2021; Zanoni & Janssens, 2004).

Hence, in this paper, we formulate an understanding of ‘ethical organizing’ that combines a view of organizations as following a higher purpose other than merely accumulating capital (Yazdani & Murad, 2015) with one that sees diversity as their ethical responsibility (Rabl et al., 2020).

Accordingly, we explore possibilities for ‘ethical organizing’ by posing the following research question: How do alternative organizations take diverse subject positions into account? In this examination of alternative organizations, our focus is on entities that pursue ‘alternative’ organizational virtues such as autonomy, solidarity, and responsibility (Parker et al., 2014) in contradiction to the strict ‘capitalocentrism’ of current economic relations (Gibson-Graham, 2006, 2008) to uncover what role diversity can play in such endeavors. Previous studies on diversity in alternative organizations have looked at the alternative organization of health care and how the participation of women is inscribed in female unpaid care work (Kleinman, 1996), how a utilitarian or a communitarian diversity regime can emerge in worker-owned food cooperatives (Meyers & Vallas, 2016), the ambivalences inherent in ‘forcing’ members of underrepresented groups to participate in collective decision making (King & Land, 2018; Reedy et al., 2016) and the potential—which must, however, be actively promoted—of alternative organizations to include individuals with diverse backgrounds (Bendl et al., 2022). Hitherto, however, little research has been conducted on ‘ethical organizing’ that takes alternative values and diversity into account.

We fill this research gap by exploring how ‘alternativeness’ is constructed and how this interconnects with representations of diversity by researching discursive representations (cf. Fairclough, 2003; Phillips & Hardy, 2002) on the websites of alternative organizations. To this end, we first introduce the notion of alternative organizations before going on to discuss diversity and its (in)visibility. Here Lewis and Simpson’s (2012) (in)visibility vortex is applied to conceptualize what is present and what remains invisible. It was initially conceived as a way of illustrating how women, treated as marginalized tokens in organizations, either disappear or opt for invisibility while the male norm remains uncontested in the ‘eye of the vortex.’ Our paper applies and expands the in(visibility) vortex to show that even though alternative organizations contest capitalism and mainstream forms of organizing from the margin, capitalocentrism remains a stable norm at the center. Moreover, ‘underneath’ capitalocentrism we identify ‘the other other,’ namely the fact that alternative organizations do not just circle around capitalism, but also around the hegemonic norm of the white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, able-bodied, educated, middle-aged man.

The contribution of our paper is twofold: Firstly, our research adds to the emergent literature on ethical organizing (Dobson, 2022; Martino, 2020; Yazdani & Murad, 2015) by positioning it at the intersection of alternative organizing and diversity, combining a virtue ethics approach (Dobson, 2022; Moore & Beadle, 2006) of alternative organizations with diversity as an ethical imperative (Lozano & Escrich, 2017). In particular, we show that ethical aspects related to alternative organizing as well as those related to diversity are in danger of disappearing. Second, our empirical study extends Lewis and Simpson’s (2012) conceptualization to an (in)visibility vortex of alternative organizing and diversity, showing that while alternative organizations aim to challenge a capitalocentric discourse, diverse subject positions—once again—play a marginal role in this endeavor. Therefore, while the potential for ethical organizing clearly exists, this has to be actively carved out.

Alternative Organizations

At the macro level of broader economic relations, the quest for ethical alternatives has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years (see, .e.g., Daskalaki et al., 2019; Maier, 2023; Peredo & McLean, 2020; Wruk et al., 2019). Such approaches highlight the already existing economic diversity beyond capitalocentrism—which is the view that the reigning system of market capitalism, i.e., private ownership of the means of production, an unequal redistribution of surplus value and the corresponding unequal accumulation of wealth, is the uncontested normal state with no viable variations or alternatives (Gibson-Graham, 2006, 2008). This search for alternatives has led to a proliferation of concepts such as “the green, communal, community, collaborative, sharing, inclusive, solidarity, informal, social, social impact, social entrepreneurship, core and commons-based economy” (Avelino et al., 2015, p. 5). Similarly, at the meso level of organizations, we can identify a vast array of approaches that challenge existing ways of organizing. These can be positioned in a spectrum ranging from social enterprises which try to “include those that profit-driven economies often ignore” (North & Scott Cato, 2017, p. 7) to communes and intentional communities, i.e., small, partly insulated groups which, bonding together “around an ideology, an economic union and a lifestyle” (Pitzer, 2014, p. 90) strive to opt out of existing economic relations. Indeed, ‘alternative’ can mean many things: While social enterprises try to provide a ‘remedy’ for the adverse effects of economic relations without aspiring to change the wider system, communes create a closed alternative socio-economic system outside of existing economic exchange relations to exclusively serve their members. Within this spectrum, entities that we label alternative economic organizations adopt the middle ground, aiming to transform contemporary forms of organizing by questioning existing “capitalocentrism” (Gibson-Graham, 2006, 2008) while at the same time participating in the existing market system to varying degrees.

Following Dahlman et al. (2022), we can distinguish contemporary conceptualizations of alternative organizations either in terms of practices or principles/values. While the former focuses on, e.g., horizontal democracy (Maeckelbergh, 2012), collectivist organizing through consensus-based decision-making (Rothschild, 2016) or open strategy processes (Dobusch et al., 2019), the latter considers how these organizations follow alternative principles and values. Our paper is based on this latter understanding, in particular that put forward by Parker et al. (2014), which examines the three notions of autonomy, solidarity and responsibility to determine how an organizational alternative is constituted while emphasizing the insufficiency of viewing any one of these values “in isolation” (p. 38). Autonomy, which encompasses fairly conventional ideas of personal freedom, implies that individuals should have choices on important issues regarding how they wish to lead their lives, in particular that each person can independently decide on issues that affect their individual (work) life (Parker et al., 2014, p. 36). While autonomy can be associated with individual ‘freedom from,’ any exercise of this freedom is embedded in a collective agreement that establishes the basis for a ‘freedom to.’ Hence, autonomy must be seen as co-produced with its apparent opposites, namely solidarity, cooperation, and community, three notions that refer to the collective and to our duties to others while emphasizing that individuals are bound together by language, culture, and organization. Individuals gain power by operating as a collective, which allows them to establish ‘freedoms to.’ Hence, this implies that the organization encourages practices to foster solidarity with other individuals and organizations as well as promoting solidarity at the societal level. Recognizing that autonomy and collectivity are co-produced, Parker et al. (2014, p. 39) point out that a “balance between individualism and collectivism will be written across our futures,” leading them to introduce responsibility as a third term in the constitution of alternative organizations. This notion reflects the manifold implications of ‘organizing,’ encouraging us to respond to present and future challenges as well as to consider the impact of decisions.

From an ethical perspective, these alternative values can be framed as organizational virtues (Dobson, 2022; Moore & Beadle, 2006) that aim to establish forms of ‘ethical organizing’ (Yazdani & Murad, 2015). Clearly, alternative organizations generally pursue a higher purpose than the mere accumulation of capital. In this perspective, ethics and the economy are no longer seen as mutually exclusive; rather, economic relations are considered to be inherently ethical when an organization is pursuing the common good instead of individual profit maximization (Martino, 2020). Hence, these organizations, their workers and partners also communicate “their unique goodness, something good that they do which may be useful or beautiful to these others: a capital of virtues and/or the pursuit of important values” (Kociatkiewicz & Kostera, 2020, p. 740).

However, operating as they do within existing economic relations, these alternative virtues are prone to disappear, a phenomenon which has been termed the ‘degeneration thesis’ (Cheney, 1999; Cornforth, 1995; Langmead, 2017; Storey et al., 2014). In their struggle to balance social and economic goals, alternative organizations are believed to run the risk of ‘degenerating’ and, in the long run, turning into mainstream organizations and economic actors. Next, we discuss diversity as an ethical responsibility (Rabl et al., 2020), the second part of our conceptualization of ‘ethical organizing.’

Diversity and (In)Visibility in Organizations

For the conceptualization of diversity as ethical responsibility, in the following we first present the conceptual basis for constituting and forming diverse subject positions. Based on this, we explore drawing on Lewis and Simpson’s (2012) (in)visibility vortex how subject positions gain visibility and are rendered invisible revolving around often uncontested norms in the center.

Diversity

From an ethical perspective (see Brennan, 2022), the moral arguments for diversity are rooted in arguments of justice related to questions of demography and identity. Clearly, people of certain demographic groups were (and are) subject to systematic discrimination, while others have traditionally enjoyed a privileged, higher status. Indeed, the guiding values for alternative organizing—autonomy, solidarity and responsibility—harbor the potential to foster diversity, in particular by supporting the moral rather than the business case (Köllen et al., 2018; Robinson & Dechant, 1997; van Dijk et al., 2012). Hence, alternative organizations must today consider a range of subject positions of diversity such as gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious beliefs or disability. These diversity dimensions represent social categories which are non-essentialist, relational, socially constructed and reproduced as well as context dependent and intersectional (see Brah & Phoenix, 2004; Litvin, 1997; McCall, 2005; Tatli & Özbilgin, 2009; Zanoni & Janssens, 2004). Subject positions, therefore, have no predetermined relations to one another and cannot be fixed into any kind of stable unity (Törrönen, 2001). Anthias (2012, p. 8) defines social categories as “part of the social landscape as forms of discourse and practice [that] enter into the social field as primary units of social representation and social organization. However, they exist within spatial and temporal contexts and are emergent rather than given and unchangeable, located in the operations of power. Such a view refuses the idea of categories as fixed elements of the social landscape but not categories themselves.”

Categories work at three level of abstraction (see Anthias, 2012): First, as social ontologies, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, etc. function as maps “pointing to where sets of relations are situated, manifested in categories and materialized in concrete relations” (ibid. p. 6). For example, in terms of gender, heteronormativity establishes a social ontology in organizations constituting and constituted by the gender binary (males and females), heterosexuality and the corresponding desire (e.g., Bendl et al., 2008) while excluding LGTBQIA issues. Second, as social categories, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, etc. work as categories of discursive practice in the making of boundaries and hierarchies. For example, regarding the category of age, generational boundaries and hierarchies may be established in organizations by both young and old employees pursuing notions of ageism and youngism. In other words, categories offer criteria that determine how individuals are placed, sorted, included and excluded. Third, as concrete social relations, the categories “refer to embodied relations of hierarchy and inequality, which encompass the subjects themselves ‘who may sort themselves out in terms of positionalities and allegiances’” (Anthias, 2012, p. 9). For example, ethnicity gains meaning in organizations through questions such as: How does suppression and exclusion form the self-perception, self-conception and self-image of minority groups and thus their perception and experience of structures and processes? Or: How does whiteness shape individual preferences and the ways in which these are suppressed or encouraged? Alternative organizations, in particular, with their strong focus on autonomy, solidarity and responsibility, might be inclined to respond well to such questions, aiming to integrate the issue of diversity in their processes and structures in order to become more inclusive (as will be explored in our empirical study). All in all, categories form specific subject positions, which are coined by diversity dimensions and power processes. Closely related to the—inherently hierarchized and hierarchizing—intersection of social categories is also their (in)visibility in relation to dominant social norms, as will be explored next.

(In)Visibility of Subject Positions

Like social categories, also visibility is culturally constructed in context (Brighenti, 2007; Dutton & Duncan, 1987; Dutton et al., 1990). The social recognition of subject positions and the ways in which they become socially established and marked is a hierarchical process embedded in existing power relations. Such marking is, however, a double-edged sword: It can empower by granting visibility to marginalized subject positions, while at the same time it can disempower when visibility is ‘granted’ within hegemonic symbolic orders (Janssen, 2014).

Based on Kanter’s (1977) work on the “tokenism of women” within hegemonic patriarchal orders in terms of their visibility (associated with being different from or marginalized by a dominant group), Simpson and Lewis (2005) introduced the image of a vortex to illustrate how organizational practices and processes both produce and reproduce the (in)visibility of social categories in organizations through centripetal and centrifugal forces that can scarcely be escaped. Their (in)visibility vortex explicates not only the dynamic structure of (in)visibility of social categories, but also highlights the fact that a norm remains uncontested at the center of the vortex.Footnote 1 Figure 1 shows this vortex and the shifting degree of visibility circling around the masculine norm at the center:

Fig. 1
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The (in)visibility vortex (from Lewis and Simpson 2012)

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The vortex metaphor stresses the preservation and concealment of the gendered norms at the heart of the vortex; indeed, this is described as a “‘dominant centre’ which encapsulates an invisible masculine norm” (Lewis & Simpson, 2012, p. 148). At the margins, attempts to contest this dominance emerge in the form of revelation, exposure, and disappearance. Revelation refers to “the potential for those in the margins to reveal the privileges and advantages of the norm” (p. 150). By revealing the privileges of the center from a marginalized position, attention is drawn towards difference and alterity. Yet, at the same time, those who reveal render themselves “visible and exposed”. Being part of these “politics of revealing” means to constantly navigate between revealing and concealing and, hence, shows “the links between revelation and exposure” (p. 151). Exposure means that anyone contesting the norm must submit to the heightened visibility of being the ‘other’; framed in Foucauldian (1978) terms, they are subject to the controlling gaze of the (male) norm. But being exposed can also be used strategically for attempts to challenge the norm. Even though there are instances of ‘positive’ exposure, being objected to the scrutinizing gaze of the norm often means that individuals opt for invisibility—conceptualized either as a forced invisibility of withdrawal and erasure or as a strategic invisibility to comply with the norm—leading to the disappearance of difference. Therefore, even if the initial aim was to contest the norm at the center, it remains uncontested, preserved and concealed in the ‘eye’ of the vortex.

Finally, how are social categories, (in)visibility and norms linked to ethical organizing? Drawing on corporate codes of ethics, global codes of ethics and the business ethics literature, Schwartz (2005, p. 39) identified universal moral values which can be taken as a guideline on how to deal with social categories and their (in)visibility. These values—which can also be subsumed under the justice-based arguments or moral case of diversity—are trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. If integrated into the ethical virtue model of an organization, they can “stimulate employees to act ethically and prevent them from acting unethically” (Kangas et al., 2014, p. 162). In particular, these values may influence how social categories are constructed and reproduced in context, and whether norms remain invisible in the eye of the vortex. In their analysis of the experience of lesbian and gay employees in India, Noronha et al. (2022) call for organizational frameworks which build on principles of recognition, mutual understanding, standpoint plurality, trust and integrity. Such principles may also subvert the norm at the center of the vortex. Clearly, to ‘act ethically’ means enabling and stimulating the construction and reproduction of a wide range of subject positions, which will help revise existing discriminatory and exclusive norms in organizations or indeed introduce new ones. The end result will be to promote fairness, readdress historical and institutional discrimination and/or enhance equality.

Against this backdrop, we will explore the possibilities for ‘ethical organizing’ at the intersection of alternative organizations and diversity asking how alternative organizations do take diverse subject positions into account. In answering this question, our investigation adds to the few existing studies on diversity in alternative organizations. For instance, Kleinman (1996) explored the problems women face in an alternative health organization when their non- or underpaid work was taken for granted as ‘normal’—female-commitment, while the involvement of men was contrasted to a successful—male-career which led to an understanding of their participation as a generous ‘gift’ to the organization. Meyers and Vallas (2016) explored how worker-owned food cooperatives developed either a utilitarian or a communitarian diversity regime, the former rooted in a hierarchical structure, the latter in maintaining horizontal organizing. Reedy et al. (2016) investigated the ambivalences of ‘forcing’ everyone, including members of underrepresented groups, to speak up in an effort to overcome the dominating voices of white men. The question of imposing democratic forms of organizing was explored by King and Land (2018), in particular when members of underrepresented groups resist participation. Regarding the issue of inclusion, Bendl et al. (2022) conclude that while alternative organizations harbor the potential to include individuals from all walks of life, this potential has to be actively carved out.

Our discussion of Lewis and Simpson’s (2012) (in)visibility vortex suggests that the (in)visibility of diverse subject positions in alternative organizations can be seen as circulating around uncontested core norms. We propose that the vortex can be read as a general conceptualization of the (in)visibility of the ‘other’ around a hegemonic norm. Applying this to alternative organizations, we argue that their alternative organizing revolves around the stable center of contemporary capitalocentrism (Gibson-Graham, 2006), with consequences for the revelation, exposure and disappearance of social categories. In the following, we introduce our three cases and the methods used to analyze them.

Cases and Context

To investigate how diversity—specifically diverse subject positions—are an ‘issue’ for alternative organizations, we decided to make use of existing data. Our focus is thus on websites of alternative organizations rather than interviews or direct observation (Bowen, 2009; Windscheid et al., 2018). Drawing on different written sources such as self-reports of organizations and other material displayed on websites, our aim was to explore various facets of the data (Coffey & Atkinson, 1996) related to diversity and alternativeness. Such online representations not only give a basic orientation – they can also be conceptualized as discursive formations based on different voices within organizations that are integrated and harmonized (Lemke, 1999, 2002): “The discursive formations which characterize these voices are systematically related to one another in ways which correspond to the macrosocial and political relations” (Lemke, 1999, p. 27).

For our qualitative empirical approach (Flick, 2014), we chose to explore the websites of alternative organizations based in Austria. The national socio-economic context of our case organizations is shaped by the Austrian Social Partnership, in which federations, chambers and the ruling political parties work(ed) closely together to implement industrial safety and market regulations, labor market strategies and principles of equal treatment in order to secure social and political stability. This has created the so-called Austrian ‘welfare state,’ a conservative welfare regime rooted in corporatism (Esping-Andersen, 2003). Traditionally, Austria has been one of Europe’s leading nations in the provision of universal social security, and thus clearly places considerable value on solidarity and equality (Dey et al. 2016, p. 1456). Furthermore, there is a long history of successful collectives and cooperatives in Austria, stretching back 150 years: For example, the Österreichischer Genossenschaftsverband (Austrian Cooperative Association) was founded in 1872, the Raiffeisenverband (Raiffeisen Association) in 1886 and the Österreichischer Konsumverband (Austrian Association of Consumer Cooperatives) in 1946. Together, all of these perspectives legitimize the Austrian context for our empirical study on alternativeness, diversity and ethical organizing.

To identify relevant organizations, we followed a theoretical sampling strategy (Charmaz, 2014). Our sampling focused on alternative economic organizations, namely entities that seek to initiate broader change of economic structures by questioning—to various degrees—current economic exchange relations. We identified three ‘extreme exemplars’ (Chen, 2016) to represent a broad spectrum of organizations differing significantly in their degree of opposition to capitalocentrism and traditional forms of organizing. Hence, they do not represent ‘extreme alternatives’ but rather aim at covering the ‘extreme ends’ of the broad spectrum of alternatives.

At one end of the spectrum, we have GEA, a private limited company which shows various similarities to a traditional for-profit organization. It was chosen not only for its focus on alternative and sustainable products/services, but also because the organization and its founder publicly express skepticism of capitalist ideals. Originally founded in Vienna in 1980 as a self-managed shoe factory (Waldviertler Schuhwerkstatt), GEA later expanded into manufacturing furniture. Today based in Schrems, (Lower) Austria, GEA has a workforce of nearly 300 employees, selling its product range of shoes and furniture in more than 40 GEA stores in Austria and Germany. The public face of the company is its founder, Heinrich Staudinger, who is recognized for his support of numerous ‘alternative initiatives’ and remains in the public eye due to his frequent criticism of globalization, tax avoidance, pollution and the destruction of the world’s natural resources.

At the other end of the spectrum, we identified Kostnix-Laden as an organization aiming to undermine the capitalist economy by fostering the non-monetary exchange of goods. Founded in 2005 by the association Wertkritische Emanzipatorische Gegenbewegung—W.E.G (Value-critical Emancipatory Counter Movement), this example of a ‘freeshop’ or ‘give-away shop’ allows ‘customers’ to deposit unneeded (second-hand) goods such as books, kitchen- and homeware, toys or DVDs and/or help themselves to items already in stock (a maximum of three per day) without paying for the goods or the service that Kostnix-Laden provides. While structured as an association, the users of Kostnix-Laden are not required to take out a membership. The long-term goal is to foster a society based on the free association and collaboration of people who no longer trade but share, who no longer compete but help each other.

The third case organization, the Bank für Gemeinwohl (Bank for the Common Good), inhabits the middle ground: As a cooperative bank in its startup phase during our data collection,Footnote 2 the organization aims to provide financial services for the common good under a solidary approach that challenges existing organizing principles of the capitalist banking system. For example, any decision on whether to grant a loan should take account of the impact an investment will have on the common good instead of solely considering financial indicators that focus strictly on capital accumulation. Initially intending to become Austria’s first “ethical alternative bank,” the goal of becoming fully operational was postponed to “202X” after the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) rejected the initial application for a banking license in late 2017. In 2018 the cooperative started negotiations with existing banks to enable it to offer financial services; since 2019 the Genossenschaft für Gemeinwohl (Cooperative for the Common Good) has offered a ‘Common Good Bank Account’ in partnership with an established local cooperative bank.

Methods

To analyze our data, we applied a qualitative content analysis (QCA) based on Mayring (2014). Assuming that individuals also construct organizational reality by explaining their thoughts, intentions and actions on official websites (Lemke, 1999, 2002), our aim was to identify discursive elements related to alternative approaches to organizing as well as to diversity as presented on the organizations’ websites. Our base data consisted of a total of 398 pages (for an overview, see Table 2 in Appendix) displayed on the websites of the three organizations. All texts were in German (translations provided by the authors). The data analysis was conducted in three steps, as follows:

In the first step, we screened and coded openly the 398 pages along the two notions of alternativeness and diversity, including their intersections. Reading and coding the data was important to inductively develop an understanding of the data.

In the second step, with the aim of increasing the analytical robustness, we determined the “direction of analysis” (Mayring, 2014, p. 58) and established a coding scheme that collate notions emerging in the data along existing concepts (Mayring, 2014, p. 95). In line with Mayring’s (2014) approach to QCA, we used these existing concepts to re-analyze the data systematically coding: (1) references to the three elements of alternative organizations proposed by Parker et al. (2014); (2) references to diversity, including various dimensions of diversity (such as gender, age, class, ethnicity, etc.) and measures dealing with diversity. The following Table 1 depicts the basis of our coding strategy in step 2.

Table 1 Coding categories
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In this second step, we read through the data to identify the notions of alternativeness and diversity as well as to inductively develop a deeper understanding of the data. We analyzed whole sentences and paragraphs, closely following the original statements in the texts. Here our aim was not only to identify the content but also its ambiguities, thereby revealing the ambivalences (Leclercq-Vandelannoitte, 2011) inherent in the alternative- and diversity-oriented elements. This resulted in an initial assessment that the data coded along alternativeness and diversity reflects a heterogeneous assemblage of notions.

Puzzled with this heterogeneous assemblage of notions being present in some parts of the texts but absent in others, we were looking for ways to conceptually grasp these seeming contradiction. Hence, for our third step, of “combining, construction, integration” (Mayring, 2014, p. 78) we established an allocation scheme based on the three categories of Lewis and Simpson’s (2012) vortex to collate the notions of alternativeness and diversity which emerged in the data. We linked our coded data on alternativeness and diversity with the elements of the vortex, i.e., revelation, exposure, and disappearance. Our findings are shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2
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Relations between the identified codes and the vortex elements (Step 3)

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The identified codes on the left summarize each organization’s discourse around autonomy, solidarity, responsibility, and diversity. These codes of alternativeness and diversity are aligned with the three elements of the vortex on the right, enabling us to identify how dominant practices are questioned (revelation), how this questioning places a spotlight on those posing the questions (exposure) and, finally, to uncover voids, or in Lewis and Simpson’s (2012) terminology, disappearance. Although our analysis of static websites at a fixed point in time cannot, strictly speaking, identify elements that disappear, our investigation showed that certain aspects related to the alternative character as well as diversity were visible in some parts of the texts but missing in others. For instance, they were visible in general statements on the organization’s strategy but lacking in the bylaws. Following Lewis and Simpson (2012), we conceptualize this absence as disappearance.

In the next section, we present these findings in relation to the (in)visibility vortex of alternative organizations.

Findings: Alternative Organizations and the (In)Visibility Vortex

Applying Lewis and Simpson’s (2012) (in)visibility vortex, we present the different facets of ethical organizing of GEA, Bank für Gemeinwohl and Kostnix-Laden as they emerged in the data by considering the notions of revelation, exposure, and disappearance.

Revelation

The websites of the three case organizations discursively reveal the dominant practices of contemporary capitalistic economies from the position of an ethical other while the norm of dominant subject positions is of little concern.

GEA’s website draws attention to the hegemony of short-term profit orientation by emphasizing the durability of its products while the dominance of globalized capitalism is demonstrated by highlighting GEA’s counter position as a local entrepreneur. This is also indicated by GEA’s involvement in the “May Manifesto for a Welfare-oriented Cooperative Movement,” which calls for the revival of (local) cooperatives. Accordingly, the website presents an ongoing initiative to transform the company into a cooperative, aimed at fostering community and solidarity. Moreover, the founder initiated the so-called “apple-tree loan,” a crowdfunding initiative to establish direct contracts between GEA and its depositors. Crowdfunding initiatives are described as an attempt to operate in a trustful way that sometimes seems to be viewed as off-limits, whereas banks are acting arbitrarily in destroying money (G5: 682).

In portraying this as a way to undermine the contemporary financial system dominated by profit-oriented banks, GEA’s website points to the capitalist norm of corporate banking and its entanglement in a hegemonic legal and regulatory framework: With a so-called ‘apple-tree loan,’ participants in this crowdfunding system have access to all internal documents of GEA and a right to be informed whenever they want to have data about GEA (G2: 615).

Among the few references to diversity on the website, age is mentioned most frequently, followed by ethnicity and gender. The statements on age deal with generational aspects as well as to a general time horizon of long product life cycles. The few examples of gender refer to prominent women in history (e.g., Rosa Luxemburg), who serve as name givers for products.

In presenting alternative grounds for decision making, in particular basing decisions on loans and investments not on profitability but rather on the contribution to the common good, the website of the Bank für Gemeinwohl reveals the banking industry’s hyper-fixation on profit. Moreover, in promoting grassroots forms of democracy and striving to counter the subjugation of minorities by majorities by offering online tools for members to get involved in the decision-making processes, the website discursively discloses the hierarchical structure of mainstream banks and the way in which they prevent participatory decision making. A general claim on the website that [e]verybody may participate in the bank – regardless of party affiliation, religious belief, origin, economic status or gender (B4: 499), apparently reveals dominant subject positions within contemporary society.

In representing a platform for the free exchange of goods, the website of the freeshop Kostnix-Laden adopts a radical stance that spotlights the centrality of money in our economic system. By establishing a pool of resources to support the idea of the autonomous subject, the website positions Kostnix as an alternative organization that promotes solidarity without reproducing the money-based exchange of goods. This is interconnected with issues of diversity, as the website identifies traditional hierarchies between charitable donors and needy recipients, thus, revealing the segregation of contemporary society along lines of class, education, and language. There is no selection and allocation according to social need or poverty. The shop is managed integratively, which means that it is not only for marginal groups. It is based on the principle that the community is supported by all its members. The shop represents a social meeting-point aimed at supporting each other, whether by consumer goods or services, by life experience or good mood (K1:1774).

In addition to providing goods free of charge, Kostnix’s website clearly states that anyone can participate regardless of educational level or wealth and, further that Kostnix is open to all individuals who support the idea of moneyless exchange of goods, irrespective of their class background. For the most part, the website also applies a gender-inclusive vocabulary. Moreover, as info brochures about the give-away shop are provided not only in German but also in English, Arabic, Serbian/Croatian, and Hungarian, the website counters the marginalization of various minority groups and encourages their active participation in free exchange. By publishing brochures on how to use the facilities in the language of migrant groups in Austria, the basic intent of the project is also presented as overcoming class disparities and contributing to a different form of society (K1:847).

In revealing the capitalist center and—to a lesser degree—dominant subject positions on their websites, our three alternative organizations expose themselves as alternatives to the main stream, as will be explored next.

Exposure

Through their visibility as the alternative ‘other,’ these organizations are subjected to the scrutinizing gaze of various stakeholders such as mainstream organizations, competitors, business partners, and contractors, on the one hand, and researchers (including the authors of this article), on the other. Indeed, the promotion of ethical practices exposes these alternative organizations and provokes an examination of just how ‘ethical’ the notions presented on the websites ‘really are.’

In extolling the durability of its products, the website of GEA creates an image of a responsible actor spurning a consumerist, throw-away society. An exposure that they also use strategically, in particular its founder Heini Staudinger who is visible throughout the website as an advocate for alternatives. The fact that participants in the crowdfunding initiative have access to all internal documents of GEA and the right to request any data about the company, exposes GEA to the scrutinizing gaze of the wider public.

By presenting itself on its website as an alternative cooperative bank that places ethical considerations at the heart of its decision making, the Bank für Gemeinwohl also discloses itself as an alternative ‘other.’ The statements of its supporters underscore this alternative positioning: They highlight the courage it takes to found a new bank and mention the individually empowering features of a democratic bank or their personal dedication to it. Those involved in the process of establishing this alternative bank refer to the investment of time and money required to ensure a good life for all (B22: 1449) with the long-term goal of creating a bank that serves the people and not the market. Numerous statements by individuals and project partners on the website discursively contrast the good, new, and alternative bank as well as the economic structures it envisions with the bad, neoliberal world of the financial industry and its focus on profit maximization (B17, B20, also in the Vision, B4). All of these statements position the bank as an alternative ethical ‘other,’ a position further sustained by the emphasis on internal democracy outlined above. Again, an exposure that is also strategically used to position itself against the norm.

In rejecting the competitive marketplace, poverty and the need to sell oneself as a precondition for obtaining goods, the website of Kostnix-Laden exposes the initiative as one contributing to the reorganization of society. Here the focus is on two main points: new forms of social cohabitation and sustainability. For instance, the website describes a plan to transform the freeshop into a neighborhood center that can promote community action such as collective cooking sessions, squatting, or freeganism (i.e., food that can be obtained for free). Moreover, Kostnix is presented as refraining from the commercialization of human relationships and competition, instead aiming to become a pacemaker for an ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable form of cooperation and interconnectedness (K2: 360). All in all, the website discursively constructs Kostnix-Laden as representing a radically different form of economic exchange: Kostnix-Laden operates on the principle of the free economy: on the shelves are useful goods, which are left for free to Kostnix-Laden by friendly persons. Those who need something take it away. No one has to pay for it or to reciprocate (K12: 60). This leads to the conclusion that the freeshop is an applied critique of capitalism (K1:9).

Indeed, these organizations use their exposure to present themselves as alternatives. However, certain notions of alternativeness and diversity are missing in our analysis of the organizations’ websites, i.e., they are not visible where one would expect them, as will be discussed next.

Disappearance

At various points where one would expect to find alternative aspects as well as diversity to be visible, they are absent. As argued above, we conceptualize this absence as a form of disappearance: The alternative aspirations characterized above disappear behind normative capitalist and mainstream organizational notions—and also the few references to diversity fade away.

For instance, even though GEA’s website promotes a manifesto for the revival of cooperatives and refers to the goal of transforming the company into a cooperative, this intention disappears when we consider GEA’s legal form (it is still run as a private limited corporation). Moreover, GEA portrays economic expansion in a positive way, referring to its responsibility to ensure that the business grows and develops in the future. For example, the rise in GEA’s profits of 4 percent in 2015 is mentioned with pride (G2: 757). Hence, even though the website declares that GEA has no interest in money per se, it confirms that financial resources are required for its growth.

The website of the Bank für Gemeinwohl also shows contradictions in leaving some alternative perspectives behind. For example, despite the promotion of participatory internal democracy, this aim disappears in the cooperative’s bylaws, which list the required governing bodies in strict hierarchical order: The board of directors is positioned at the top, followed by the board of supervisors and the general assembly at the bottom. Moreover, the fact that the rights of the general assembly are limited in the bylaws can be interpreted as a form of disappearance: the principle of grassroot participation visible in general statements on the democratic aspirations of the bank disappears in this crucial legal document. The tension between democracy and hierarchy is also present in the handling of transparency: While this is also promoted in the narrative sections of the website, the bylaws do not consistently grant each individual member the right to access all documents of the cooperative, e.g., the minutes of meetings of the board of directors or the supervisory board. Furthermore, the description of the procedure to become a member of the cooperative states that the information provided in the official prospectus may not be copied or provided to others. While this can be read as simply showing sensitivity to the handling of information, it can also be regarded as a non-solidary act towards other projects. Reflecting this guideline, the bylaws distinguish between members and non-members of the cooperative, a distinction that not only regulates the possibilities of democratic participation in the cooperative but also provides privileges to members over non-members regarding future access to the bank’s products such as accounts, loans or even courses offered by the cooperative’s academy. As was pointed out above, this distinction between members and non-members is not made by the Kostnix-Laden.

On the Kostnix website, we find no explicit information on how the shop is organized in terms of responsibility or whether a hierarchical structure exists. One can only find a statement that the shop is run by an association, without disclosing information on its members or the board. In general, the website does not seem to encompass similar ambivalences as the other two case organizations. The societal aim should rather be to reduce the extent of necessary work in order to have more time for leisure activities full of joy, creativity, advancement. […] Society should be reorganized towards work-sharing, cooperation, and without exchange. The problem lies in the fact that the people cannot imagine things differently to what they already know. Hopefully, Kostnix projects can kickstart the imagination (K7: 13). As this quote shows, Kostnix is comparatively radical in its rejection of any capitalist form of exchange—if one ignores the fact that all products exchanged at the freeshop most likely originate in capitalist production.

But it is not only aspects of alternativeness that vanish; also the sparse references to diverse subject positions are not visible at points where one would expect them. Therefore, we argue that they disappear. Apart from a few references to gender and age, GEA’s website does not outline any practices aimed at enhancing the participation of marginalized subjects. For example, diversity in terms of (dis)ability, sexual orientation or religious belief is completely absent. Furthermore, the website’s description of aid projects (depiction of ‘Africans’ who could help ‘Europeans’ cure their virus of ‘egoism’) uses a colonial language of exoticism, which makes colonial injustice disappear.

Despite the general claim on the website of the Bank für Gemeinwohl that anyone can participate, there is no evidence of organizational practices that aim to achieve this goal nor any indication of how to encourage the participation of excluded and/or marginalized groups. As diversity is only implicitly present or even absent, claims that members of the cooperative bank are able to network with like-minded individuals (B12) as well as statements such as be part of our community (ibid.) raise the following questions: Who are in fact the ‘like-minded’? Who has access to this ‘community’? Indeed, with diversity being only implicitly present on the website, this could imply a rather homogenous community. At this point it has to be noted that the website of the Bank für Gemeinwohl is the only one of our three cases that has pictures and statements of several individuals, so it is also the only website that can be analyzed in terms of the homogeneity it conveys. In terms of gender, the proponents of the bank form a rather unbalanced group. Overall, there are three times more men than women: only 13 statements are given by female supporters compared to 33 by male supporters; the employees and contributors comprise 20 women and 28 men; there are 11 testimonials from men compared to only one statement by a woman. In terms of class and ethnic background, the depicted individuals also form a rather homogenous group of white persons. The long list of involved persons includes artists, dentists, CEOs of for-profit and non-profit organizations, a Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop, consultants and entrepreneurs, an associate professor, as well as a comedian. People at the lower end of the social hierarchy are, in contrast, entirely absent. Hence, the proclaimed diversity and equality in terms of gender, religion, party affiliation, origin, and economic status seems to have disappeared when looking at the protagonists and supporters of this alternative project.

While the website of Kostnix-Laden depicts measures to enable participation irrespective of class and language, there are signs of an imbalance regarding gender and ethnicity: More images are shown of white men than white women, the shop assistants and webmaster are male and a greater number of men than women are presented as authors of press articles on Kostnix-Laden. In fact, women are portrayed more as customers rather than as part of the organization. Furthermore, the applied gender-neutral language is disrupted by referring to Mensch (human being) only as ‘he.’ Disability, sexual orientation or religious belief are neither explicitly nor implicitly mentioned on the website.

To summarize, our data illustrates how all three examined cases of alternative organizations revolve around the norm of capitalocentrism. The data shows that while the organizations’ websites aim to challenge the center of capitalocentrism from a marginalized position of the ethical other, diversity and different subject positions are, however, not consistently interwoven in this endeavor. By conceptualizing our findings within Lewis and Simpson’s (2012) (in)visibility vortex and its focus on revelation, exposure, and disappearance, we uncover the struggles and tensions of ethical organizing around dominant norms—its characteristics will be explored in the discussion below.

Discussion

Examining ethical organizing at the intersection of alternative organizations and diversity, our study shows that ethical aspects related to alternative organizing as well as those related to diversity are in danger of disappearing in alternative organizations. Our analysis has shown that while there are references to alternative values as well as to diversity, they are invisible at points where one would expect them to be. This implies that the idea of fairness as an ethical obligation of diversity (Gilbert et al., 1999, p. 65) does not hold true because there is this unseen area of reproducing, for instance, a gender binary or whiteness as structuring principles of the norm in these organizations. From a virtue ethics perspective (Kociatkiewicz & Kostera, 2020; Martino, 2020; Yazdani & Murad, 2015) of alternative organizing, this implies that in order to establish coherent forms of ethical organizing, measures would be required to ensure that a diverse array of subject positions can be represented and different voices can be heard.

Our findings show how alternative organizations discursively challenge the norm of capitalocentrism by revealing: (1) the profit orientation of the current economic and financial system in the case of GEA; (2) the negative consequences of the banking system in the case of the Bank für Gemeinwohl; and (3) the centrality of money in exchange relations in the case of the freeshop Kostnix. Such revelations expose these organizations to the scrutinizing gaze of others, including researchers such as ourselves. However, even though norms of capitalocentrism are revealed, some facets are not visible throughout while others cannot be found where one would expect them to be visible. Regarding this void, we argue that alternative notions disappear in the questioning of capitalocentrist norms. For example, claims that an organization has been transformed into a cooperative disappear when one examines the current legal form, or the promise of grassroots forms of participation and transparency vanishes when looking at the bylaws. This absence of alternativeness is in line with previous research proposing the ‘degeneration thesis’ (Cheney, 1999; Cornforth, 1995; Langmead, 2017; Storey et al., 2014) to describe how cooperatives struggle to remain alternative within capitalist societies, in particular that they often ‘leave behind’ their alternative values. In our three cases, only Kostnix appears to have retained its original radicalness in aiming to escape existing economic relations.

Lewis and Simpson’s (2012) initial model focuses on the masculine norm at the center, we extend their scope by proposing an (in)visibility vortex of alternative organizing and diversity (see Fig. 3). Firstly, this broadens their model beyond the initial focus on gender (masculinity/femininity) to the domain of alternative organizations by illustrating how an alternative discourse aims to contest—to various extents—capitalocentrism from the margins. Secondly, we widen their model by adding diversity to show how not only masculinity remains uncontested at the center, but rather the unmarked hegemony of the white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, able-bodied, educated, middle-aged man. Our analysis indicates that in their ethical efforts to challenge the ‘outer’ center of capitalist economics, the ‘core’ center of the vortex, namely privileged and hegemonic subject positions, remains in the undisrupted eye. Hence, this norm persists unquestioned—also because those in central positions tend to defend the invisibility of their privileges and the advantages that come along with it (Lewis & Simpson, 2012). Figure 3 depicts this expanded model:

Fig. 3
figure 3

The (in)visibility vortex of alternative organizing and diversity

Full size image

In vortex terms, in all three cases, diversity dimensions such as gender and age are marginalized, with the dimensions of disability and sexual orientation being completely absent and invisible. In addition, all websites implicitly reproduce a gender binary and whiteness as structuring principles. Therefore, we can state that while the organizational discourse presented on the websites of the three organizations indicates that they question the center of capitalocentrism from a marginalized position of the alternative other, diversity is not consistently represented in this endeavor.

Based on Anthias’s (2012) three analytical levels of abstraction (social ontologies, social categories, and concrete social relations), the absence of diversity in the data can be discussed as follows: On the one hand, it could be argued that such an absence is a sign that these organizations are ‘beyond difference,’ i.e., that everybody is free to participate without the need to be explicitly mentioned. However, considering that objectified norms, rational procedures and the abstract conceptual organization create an appearance of neutrality and impersonality based on subtle processes of power gendering and engendering (see Smith, 1988), it is imperative to question this alleged neutrality of alternative organizing. Various studies have shown how such relations concerning various diversity dimensions are actually concealed within subtexts (see Bendl, 2008; Benschop & Doorewaard, 1998; Calás & Smircich, 1992; Fleischmann, 2009; Lewis & Simpson, 2012) based on the binary of the ‘norm’ and the ‘other,’ thereby displaying the rational organization as the unmarked norm whose existence is supported by the ‘other,’ the absent. Thus, the disappearance of the already scarce visibility of diversity that runs through our findings indicates that existing relations of domination are rationally organized, objectified, and impersonalized and, furthermore, claim universality.

On the other hand, concerning the manifestation of categories and their discursive practice in the making of boundaries and hierarchies, the websites implicitly construct gender as a binary (Bendl et al., 2008; Bendl & Hofmann, 2015); ethnicity is presented as a discourse of unmarked whiteness (Samaluk, 2014); and class is addressed through middle- and upper-class persons and interests (with the exception of the Kostnix case). Third, regarding concrete social relations, the websites display males as the norm and women as the other (Benschop & Doorewaard, 1998), whiteness as the dominant ethnicity (Al Ariss et al., 2014), and class relations as a binary construction between those who support the existing economic system and those who oppose it and wish to dissolve class differences. The complete absence of the diversity dimensions disability and sexual orientation indicates that the websites implicitly reproduce able-bodied (Dobusch, 2017; Jammaers & Zanoni, 2020) and heteronormative norms (Bendl et al., 2008; Bendl & Hofmann, 2015). Against the backdrop of organizational subtexts (Bendl, 2008; Benschop & Doorewaard, 1998; Calás & Smircich, 1992; Fleischmann, 2009; Lewis & Simpson, 2012) and accepting categories as social ontologies that act as maps “pointing to where sets of relations are situated, manifested in categories and materialized in concrete relations” (Anthias, 2012, p. 6), we argue that even if organizations go ‘beyond’ diversity, diverse subject positions should nonetheless be visible in the (alternative) organizational representations as, clearly, diverse subjects inhabit the social environment in which these organizations are embedded in.

All in all, our data reveal that attempts to organize ethically at the intersection of alternative organizing and diversity aim (as our cases show to varying degrees) to contest the capitalist norm from the margin; these efforts, however, to promote ethical organizing by incorporating contestations of capitalocentrism and promoting diversity remain ambivalent, as the norm of the white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, able-bodied, educated, middle-aged man is only questioned in a very limited way. Moreover, even these limited contestations are not visible throughout—in other words, they tend to disappear. Thus, our study demonstrates and gives insights into the ways in which alternative organizations—as the ‘other’ of capitalism—aim to contest the reigning capitalocentrism while at the same time the representations of diverse subject positions within these organizations—as the ‘other other’ of alternative organizing—remain largely invisible.

At this point, the question remains whether this invisibility can be framed in Lewis and Simpsons’ (2012) terms as a strategic invisibility to comply with the norm or whether this is a forced invisibility of withdrawal or erasure. Here, the limitations of our analysis based on existing data become graspable. Further research will be needed to explore this in more detail, while our final conclusion below will provide some possible explanations.

Conclusion

Our study is the first to show how alternative organizations reveal the centrality of capitalism from a marginal position, how this exposes them as the alternative other and how the norm of the white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, able-bodied, educated, middle-aged man remains uncontested in their center. Working from the margins against the capitalocentric mainstream to carve out possibilities for ethical organizing beyond pure profit maximization, alternative organizations may be forced to uphold hegemonic symbolic values in order to maintain a ‘voice’ in their capitalist context. As such, an alternative organization that also questions the norm of the white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, able-bodied, educated, middle-aged man could in fact signify a double cultural marginalization and symbolic negation (Tyler & Cohen, 2010, p. 35), namely by operating both outside the economic mainstream and the non-diverse hegemonic system. By examining cases that show different levels of alternativeness, our findings suggest that organizations challenging capitalism in the most radical way also go furthest in expanding the subjects of alternativeness to include a variety of diversity categories.

Future research might delve into whether this assertion also holds true for other types of alternative organizations, as one of the limitations of our study can be seen in the rather limited scope of the three cases we examined. Nonetheless, we believe that our analysis of a broad spectrum of alternatives offers some initial insights into the phenomenon of invisibility of marginalized positions for ethical organizing at the intersection of alternativeness and diversity. Future research is needed to determine how the (in)visibility of diverse subject positions that we identified in the discourse of alternative organizations can be conceptualized in the spectrum ranging from forced invisibility in terms of withdrawal and erasure to strategic invisibility. For the latter, one could argue that alternative organizations, which already occupy the position of the marginalized ‘other’ in a capitalocentric discourse, might strategically opt to maintain a ‘residue’ of symbolic power and privilege by preserving the hegemonic norm of the white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, able-bodied, educated, middle-aged man—similar to Lewis and Simpson’s (2012) finding that women opt for invisibility by strategically subsuming themselves to male norms. Further research that included field work on practices and additional case organizations focusing explicitly on diversity would certainly bring fresh insights into how the norm of the white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, able-bodied, educated, middle-aged man can be contested within an alternative organizational setting. Our current findings on alternative organizations suggest that those acting from a self-imposed position of the ‘other’ to the capitalist norm can potentially harm their position as a ‘viable’ agent if they further question hegemonic norms such as masculinity, whiteness, heteronormativity, or able-bodiedness. Not questioning these norms, however, limits their space for ethical organizing. While we fully acknowledge the efforts of our three investigated organizations to change their organizational and economic relations towards more ethical ends, we note that the aim of ethical organizing to build ‘a better future for all’ can only succeed if measures are incorporated to ensure that this future is not—once again—formulated by a homogenous (white) elite. Accordingly, a discursive shift is needed to strengthen the connection between alternative organizations’ challenge of capitalist economies with, e.g., the feminist, anti-racist, queer and disability rights movements. This would enable organizations to question different forms of hegemony and open the doors to material change—in the name of ethical organizing.