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Glossary
Management Approaches to Diversity
CONSTRUCT - To reframe and emerge the discourses and solutions in the situation whereby the players learn and can ethically choose their appropriate behaviors, either reflecting their individual or the organization's value systems. CONTEXTUALIZE - To uncover all the variables evident in the social constellation of a situation between individuals at work. CULTURE - The beliefs, customs, practices and social behavior of a particular group, nation, or people. The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, values, customs and all other products of human work and thought to guide the cultural group's worldview and decision-making. CULTURISM - Using culture as a racial marker, an absolute otherness, that places purported members of that culture into a dehumanized and reified category, much as racism does. DECONSTRUCT - To illuminate the truth claims inherent in any statement or utterance: to expose the hierarchical power relations and binary thinking behind the narrative. DISCOURSE - This is where "the who" of the narrative is called into being, where an effort to communicate something about something to someone happens. It is where we ask 'who is doing the speaking'. One's discourse enables ones self-identity, it is self-constitutive. For example, the discourse of race taken up by a person situates his identity in racial terms within a narrative of inclusion, exclusion, hierarchy and other contexts of the narratives of society DISENCHANTMENT - The deadening sense of an iron cage of rationality, cost benefit and disembodied existence on the job leading to what we call the Nihilist Organization. It includes such things as dysphoria (anxiety run loose, fear, dread, meaningless information, communications in disembodied language games that alienate, and a crisis in management or leadership legitimacy where the dominant/legitimate systems diverge from proliferating shadow systems steeped in rumors and alternative power scenarios. DISRUPT - To speak the truth about human diversity and vitality when conformity and assimilation pressures an organization towards rigidity or when a vacuum emerges leading to chaos. DOING - Being actively engaged in an activity for the purpose of accomplishing something. EMANCIPATION - To free the individual from all forms of discrimination, oppression and domination, including language. Emancipation not only eliminates barriers to employment, self-esteem, civic participation, and citizenship privileges, but it also reinvents language. Discourses and narratives are reworked to include diversity, multiplicity, hybridity and identities in relations instead of the language of bipolar superiority - inferiority or totality - particularity, empowering the individual by demanding the right to be different and fundamentally changing the ways in which the definition of identity (hence the me) is understood. EMOTIONAL COMPETENCIES / EMOTIONAL QUOTIENT (EQ) - Behavioral capabilities in the face of emotional situations that allow an individual to cope and react in difficult circumstances in a way that is effective and constructive both for themself and for others involved. Originally formulated by Daniel Golman in his book Emotional Intelligence in 1995. ENCHANTMENT - A sense of awe and wonder at being in the world, the sense of encouragement and involvement with the workplace. Enchantment elements in the work environment refer to joyful attachment, enamored existence, affective fascination, and a playful ethics of generosity in encountering other beings . Enchantment provides the affect in motivation as people seek more meaning in what they do at work. The safe space for creativity elements are some of the enchantment variables present in vitality based organizations. ESSENTIALIZE - Like reification, it is about subsuming and reducing the multifarious nature of life, of 'being', of a person into a simplistic item, usually a biological element or a cultural variable. For example, to say one is essentially black is to collapse everything about this person to the speaker's projected idea of what the essence of blackness is. ETHICS - A system of values and principles governing the appropriate conduct for an individual or group. ETHNICITY - A heterogeneous population distinguished by customs or characteristics, language, common history and or national origin. ETHNOCENTRISM - A comparative stance whereby some think that their ways of thinking, acting, and believing are the only right, proper, and natural ones and to believe that those who differ are strange, bizarre, or unenlightened. GENDER - The biological sex (male or female) with which we are born. It is determined by our chromosomes, it is influenced by our hormones, and it is evidenced by our genitalia. GRAMMAR OF CONDUCT - The framework or structure, not unlike the grammatical structure of language, that guides collaborative and respectful behaviors between employees, and of employees with other stakeholders, including customers, clients, suppliers, financial communities, and the communities in which we live. It is centered on the values of the organization and embedded in the constitutional project of the organization that further embraces the organizational vision and management systems. These values drive the ethics and the authenticity of the organization's social responsibility. HISTORICIZE - To establish the historical context and lineage of phenomenon. HYBRID - Something made up of a mixture of different elements. A hybrid identity is when a person identifies with the multiple cultural or other sources of meaning-making in their lives. IDENTITY ASSERTIVENESS / MILITANCY - The aggressive posturing of one's primary identity as the source of all meaning and being for an individual. It takes multiple forms, including political or social activism, dress, speaking and acting 'authentically', or victimization and fundamentalism. MORALITY - Standards of conduct that are accepted as right or wrong according to a single version of sacred text, such as the Bible, Talmud, Koran or other recognized sacred document. NARRATIVE - Provides the ongoing context in which the figures / persons in a discourse are embedded and get their meanings, their sense and their reference. It provides the horizon of possible meanings that are used in the discourse. They are the big stories, such as the narrative of progress, or the American narrative of democracy and liberty. It provides the ontological structure of human experience. Narratives speak at people, while discourses are spoken by a person, about themselves (C. Schrag, 1997, pgs 26-27). ONTOLOGIZE - To describe the social constellation of living beings as they unfold, evolve and grow, instead of seeing them as objects or things. Looking at both the experience of being itself with the social structures. ONTOLOLOGICAL SECURITY - Having an average expected environment at work whereby one feels that the disenchantment drivers for anxiety, fear, dread, melancholy and stress are contained for the working individual. It is that 'protective cocoon' Giddens speaks of. ORGANIZATIONAL CHAOS - Fragmented organizations where a vacuum of leadership, values and mission leads to garbage can decision making, weak ties, diversity run amok, information overload and anything goes relativist models of acculturation. ORGANIZATIONAL CHAOTICS - The method of understanding an organization's dynamics informed by the sciences of chaos and complexity. ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE - The underlying values, beliefs, principles, systems, assumptions that serve as a foundation for the organizationŐs management system, as a set of management practices and behaviors that both exemplify and reinforce those principles and ultimately drive employee and management behaviors and decisions. ORGANIZATIONAL NIHILISM - An anti life, anti diversity business culture that focuses on short term shareholder value at the expense of being out of balance with other stakeholders such as employees, suppliers and customer relations. PRAXIS - The intersection of theory with practice into application. ORGANIZATIONAL RIGIDITY - The hierarchical, ex officio authority, organization where conformity and fear are dominant, information is protected and given out on a 'need to know basis' only, assimilation is the preferred acculturation model, alongside of segregation and exclusion and lastly, a strong established "good old boy network" thrives. ORGANIZATIONAL VITALITY - A balanced organizational culture that values pluralism, is steeped in an ethical system, values creativity and the centrality of human diversity and innovation. PROCESS OF DISCRIMINATION - The process that determines which groups of individuals are superior-inferior, typical-atypical, universal-particular. PROTEAN (identities) - The ever adapting and evolving identities one has in relationship with others and with changing situations. The fractal sense of hybridity, multiplicity and learning one has with the world outside of themselves. RACE - Any of the different variations of mankind distinguished by form of hair, color of skin, shape of eyes, stature, bodily proportions. The three major racial categories are the Negroid, Mongoloid, and the Caucasian. These racial distinctions are increasingly seen as unscientific and socially constructed. RACISM - the placement of humanity into strictly differentiated categories such that the racist's racial category is seen as superior, typical of humanity, beautiful, and universally representative of mankind. The people in the 'other' categories are therefore dehumanized. REIFICATION - The reduction of a human being (or a work of art or an idea) into a material object. This reification takes place when the value of anything like a human being is obscured by its worth when it is sold, by its exchange value. It is a reductionist gesture that makes things out of living beings or art. RESSENTIMENT - Taken from the philosopher F. Nietzsche, it means the repeated negative response, the persistent emotional movement of hostility that, nonetheless, cannot be overtly expressed and must remain repressed. It accumulates in social situations such as Euro-American businesses where a general assumption of equality among all human beings is prevalent, yet, on the other hand, a persistent inequity and discriminatory practice occurs. It is part of the legitimation crisis between the talk and the walk of management. It is externalized when a particular person or group can be identified as the cause for one's privation, for one's impotence in making changes to the situation that we perceive to be injuring us . SEXUAL ORIENTATION / SEXUAL IDENTITY - The factor that determines to whom we are erotically and affectively attracted. It is influenced by a variety of factors: genetic, environmental, and hormonal. There are three sexual orientations: homosexual, heterosexual, and bisexual. SUBCULTURE - A group of people who have had different experiences from those of the dominant culture by status, ethnic background, residence, religion, education, power, or other factors that functionally unify the group and act collectively on its members. VALUES - Principles and standards that have meaning and worth to an individual, family, group, or community/organization. They are associated with what is important to a cultural or ethnic group or individual. VITALITY CONSULTING - The body of services informed by the sciences of complexity, identity theory and critical social theory applied to the business environment. Building organizational cultures based on vitality. VICTIM - One whose suffering is lived as identity, who spreads their suffering by blaming others instead of taking responsibility and empowerment to dismantle the structures and processes of subordination. Complex Adaptive Systems ATTRACTORS - Points within a dynamic system that draw agents within the system to them, or the set ofpoints toward which the trajectories within a system converge over time. Pertinent to organizations, an attractor is a pattern of behavior toward which a system gravitates if uninfluenced by outside factors. In terms of Vitality Consulting, the potential state and the trajectory of behavior patterns within the organization can be influenced (but not controlled) by shaping the rules of interaction that create the specific experience of the system. COOPETITION - A constructive tension bhere both competition and cooperation between agents are pursued, contributing to their mutual benefit. Coherent behavior within a system arises from the interplay of competition and cooperation among the agents. COEVOLUTION - Within the fitness Landscaoe, every agent attempts to maximize its own survival potential by continually modifying its strategy in an attempt to become more "fit," steadily moving its strategic position "uphill" closer and closer to a peak. Changing strategy changes an agent's relative advantage or disadvantage to every other agent, moving it to a different point on the landscape. At the same time, the other agents can potentially change their own strategy in response to this shift. So the landscape for the system continually shifts through this parallel advantage-seeking, or coevolution, of the various agents. This means that successfully making your way to a peak is no guarantee that you can stay there because the peak may shift right out from under you! CREATIVE DESTRUCTION - A term coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter to describe capitalism's inescapable "perennial gale" of qualitative change, the "process of industrial mutation...that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in. . ." It is an accurate description of the fitness landscape from an economic perspective. DISSIPATIVE SYSTEM - A system whose dynamics are stable and recognizable, but which requires input of energy from outside the system to continually renew the system's stability. Without external energy, the system collapses. EDGE OF CHAOS - The balance point, or "phase transition" in a system where the components never quite lock into place, and never quite dissolve into turbulence, giving rise to new behaviors upon which adaptation is contingent. In organizations, it is the interval between the place where rules and conformity impose inhibiting rigidity, and the place where turbulence and factionalism create fragmentation and disintegration. In terms of Vitality Consulting, it is the bounded instability of the "Space for Creativity", stable enough that information can be stored, and evanescent enough that information is transmitted freely, where all employees feel safe enough to contribute in all aspects of their fluctuating identity because trust sufficient for honest and self-reflective interaction can exist and be sustained, and exploratory and creative activity can survive. EMERGENT BEHAVIOR - Unintended, unanticipated, unpredictable global patterns of behavior that arise through the spontaneous activity of interdependent agents acting according to their own perceived best interests and rules of behavior. Through emergent behavior, a complex system acquires properties that none of the agents possess on their own, and therefore cannot be ascribed to the attributes of the individual agents in the system. ENTROPY - The movement defined by Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics that states that any system tends to move toward a disorganized condition. Essentially, energy spontaneously tends to flow in only one direction, from being concentrated on one place to becoming diffused or dispersed. EQUILIBRIUM - A system state due to feedback mechanisms that dampen or eliminate variations from that state. In thermodynamics, equilibrium is the condition of maximum entropy, or inertness, when forward or reverse reactions compensate for one another, so there is no longer any variation. By definition, a complex adaptative system cannot reach equilibrium and survive. FITNESS LANDSCAPE - "Fitness" in this sense is the suitability of the strategy that a given agent pursues to achieve its purpose: its survival or success compared to the relative suitability of the strategies used by other agents in the system or their fitness. A three-dimensional plot of the fitness of all the potential strategies that could be employed by the agents that compose the system environment gives us a fitness landscape. This landscape consists of a range of valleys whose heights and depths correspond to the advantage or disadvantage that a given strategy offers compared to the other potential strategies. The peaks represent strategies that lead to success; the valleys represent strategies that lead to extinction. FRACTAL - A term coined by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot to signify the expression of the geometry of nature. Fractals are the inherent patterns, repetitions, and high level order that become visible through magnification of seemingly chaotic movement and processes, in natural phenomena ranging from snowflakes, crystals and ferns to clouds, canyons, and seacoasts. NEGATIVE FEEDBACK LOOP - A process that compares outcomes to a predetermined target, determines deviations from that target, and feeds information about deviations into a process that determines choices for action to remove the deviation. In organizations it is the process of intentional development and control that damps down change and secures stability. These anomalies in the traditional "equilibrium" organization would be seen as a deviation from preordained conditions, established norms, or the status quo, and duly eliminated through a deterministic set of rules that discounts nonlinear elements to the system. NON-LINEAR DYNAMICS - The science of unpredictable causality, due to a web of complex connections that dictate that the slightest change in one place causes tremors everywhere within the system. Contrary to classical physics, nonlinear dynamics postulates that the whole is frequently greater than the sum of its parts. In a nonlinear system, tiny perturbations potentially produce effects at a distance, defying predictability, creating rich patterns of behavior and stable structures that are far-from-equilibrium (i.e. uncontrolled by negative feedback loops that would otherwise eliminate variations.) NONLINEARITY - A state where actions can have multiple outcomes or generate nonproportional outcomes, where minor disturbances or variations from the norm can have unpredictable, potentially exponential consequences. The outcome of nonlinear phenomena are ultimately beyond specific control. POSITIVE FEEDBACK - A process that amplifies deviation from expected norms, destabilizing the system in nonlinear ways, meaning small events can potentially and unpredictably have large consequences. In a positive feedback loop, success tends to be reinforced, and loss tends to be aggravated. This is antithetical to the predominating equilibrium-oriented organizational performance models. Increasing returns generate instability and move further away from equilibrium. Its final outcome is not predictable. There is no control mechanism that returns the system to the previous state. In organizations, positive feedback loops frequently occur in the informal, or shadow, system, as reactions to events or ideas gain a constitutency and displace the recognized set of rules. With sufficient amplification, the status quo is destroyed and innovation results. REDUCTIONISM - The classic approach to science, 'reducing' complicated phenomena to its components, and then to its basic parts, to determine fundamental laws that explain how the world works. SELF-ORGANIZATION - The spontaneous gravitation of simultaneously independent and interdependent agents who, operating for their own benefit and by their own rules, converge into emergent patterns of behavior that tend to maximize the likelihood of mutual success. SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY - A system with a naturally intricately interlocking set of subsystems, where fluctuation of components moving through the system regularly result in minor breakdowns and rearrangements in the system's stability, and occasionally result in catastrophic breakdown, or "extinction events" of various sizes. SHADOW SYSTEM - A term coined by Ralph Stacey to describe the set of interactions among members of an organization that are outside the rules prescribed by the legitimate organizational system. It is the Informal system where experimentation, play, innovation, politics, and pursuit of personal gain take place. It is a hotbed for the drivers of enchantment and disenchantment. |
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