Consultancies in the bigger cities in Europe face an increasingly diverse workforce. Consultancies are known for their friendship culture, a means to help realize normative control. The idea is that workers identify with the firm and with each other, internalize corporate values, and act in the interest of the firm, is if it was their own interest. Friendship cultures are seen as inclusive, supporting employees to be themselves. However, for minorities this culture poses some challenges, as it is developed in a western context, and very popular among graduates of western business schools, extending student life with many social activities, drinks events and blurring work-life boundaries, all of which goes against some of the key values of several minority groups. We ask the question how professionals with different cultural minority backgrounds experience working in a predominantly western corporate friendship culture. We explore the question with an interview study among Dutch junior and senior consultants, half of them with minority backgrounds and the other half from the majority group. We find that background mediates the experience of friendship culture, with effects on the experience of career support. We also observe a tendency toward subgroup formation, triggered by the invitation to be yourself in a friendship culture. These findings contributes to the literature on normative control. We also find that identity work can moderate this outcome, but that strategic identity work to make yourself visible among the sponsors and gatekeepers in the company is more challenging for minorities that have difficulties to identify with the majority culture, a finding that adds nuance to the diversity literature. The findings also contribute by putting diversity as topic on the agenda in the consultancy literature.
