Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Managing Diversity: Establishing An Agenda For Organizational Change, Jamie Comstock

Jayne Marie Comstock

Managing organizational diversity requires managing change. Contemporary organizational leaders must prepare people to adapt to changes in organizational membership and effectively motivate all members of a diverse workforce. However, diversity initiatives are controversial and often met with employee resistance and a backlash of resentment, dissatisfaction, and group polarization. This paper advances a Dialectical Diversity Audit procedure that results in an effective agenda for diversity-related cultural change. The usefulness of the procedure is demonstrated through a Diversity Audit of a mid-sized public university in the southern United States. Using focus group interview techniques and interpretive ethnography, the Diversity Dialectics Audit “gave …