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Description of Model - An Explanation
Although we all benefit from increased
diversity, what is important about diversity is not merely in the numbers. What
is important is whether or not a safe space exists for diverse people,
identities or selves to be creative, to have voice and to contribute. What
matters to people on the job is whether the social constellation of forces that
energize the multiple webs of relationships each diverse individual finds
h/herself in, on the job, is safe and supportive. All businesses are built up
of multiple relationships. Each of these relationships in turn, embeds the self
in a “web of interlocutors” [1],
each in conversation with the other. We are always asking who we are, what we
are and where we are. We ask who are you and what does that mean for me? What
the business does with these conversations is what counts. Does it encourage,
constrict, prohibit or frame conversations? Does the environment enchant people
to collaborate or is it disenchanting and hence de-vitalizing? The business
needs diversity as much as we need business.
The model represents the totality
of our objective in that mere diverse representation is only the beginning of
the journey, not the destination. It is also, not unlike continuous improvement
in quality circles, a continuous journey to refine our understanding and our
tools to build vitality, unleash human diversity from its organizational
fetters, and tap into the infinite potentiality of human creativity and
innovation.
To wit, the following ten elements of our
praxis will be explored and will unfold in the course of developing and
dialoguing with concerned practitioners in the pages of Diversity Praxis.
- Managing
and Valuing Diversity (MVD) as praxis is out of date: The modernist diversity
practice called Managing and Valuing/Leveraging Diversity (MVD) is not only
outmoded for the emerging post industrial and post modern global world, but is
unconsciously complicit in marginalizing formerly discriminated against
peoples. Its management narrative situates people as things to manage.
Oftentimes, marginalization takes a less overt form today to include silencing,
and victimization, over overt dehumanization. MVD is suffering from a legitimacy
crisis.
- Identity matters: EEO / diversity categories, though useful, can cause harm. Identities, on the other hand, orient us to what things or which things have meaning for us; it provides us with the frame of reference we use to make qualitative evaluations and distinctions in life. It helps us decide what is important and what is not. It is my framework from which I take a stand. It is a key component of the 3C’s and 4I’s of innovation (See Glossary). When our multiple, protean identities are denied us (pushing us into closets), we become disoriented. By institutionalizing dialogue in a workplace communicative project, we allow for the unfettered intersection between each diverse individual’s self-knowledge with their knowledge of the world, free from oppression and free to contribute. With emancipation, I freely and fluidly self-identify, and not get labeled.
- Merging practices: A new diversity praxis can be efficient in these turbulent and paradoxical times if it merges with the otherwise separate disciplines of organizational development and knowledge management. Implications of new concepts and awareness introduced in fields such as complex
systems, organizational dynamics, social psychology and cognitive theory must be evaluated and integrated where applicable.
- From
consilience to a paradigm shift: This merging of
disciplines can only be effective if
they not only take the best practices of the former diversity approaches and
organizational disciplines, but they also update their theory and practice with
the new paradigm shifts in the sciences: complexity and chaos from physics,
identity and critical social theory from the human sciences. This allows
management, HR and consultants to energize strategic thinking for a competitive
fitness landscape.
- Disrupt-Contextualize-Construct
Methodology: The new HR methodological model involves (1) disrupting
conformity, rigidity and chaos, (2) contextualizing relationships,
acculturation, and social constellations on the job, and then (3) constructing
organizational vitality with ethical pluralism in a constitutional project.
- Disrupting
rigidity/chaos: The focus on business vitality involves investing in disrupting
the twin dangers of rigid or chaotic organizational trajectories. This includes
disrupting the reification of people with labels taken out of the EEO based
diversity wheel or the denying of multiple diverse narratives in the name of
efficiency and order.
- Manage
the context, not the people: The focus of this new merger and praxis must be on
the business culture and its acculturation practices, not on the individual. This is not to say that the individual is not held accountable in a grammar of conduct. Rather, it means to focus on pluralism contained by a values system, a
regulatory system, and an ethical system within a grammar of conduct. This culture must be articulated and supported with a constitutional project that equally safeguards the membership of all identities in the firm as it promotes stakeholder dialogue while keeping an eye on the notion of business vitality. It simply means to manage the context and not the people.
- Enchantment
– Disenchantment: To wit, the new diversity praxis is called vitality
consulting. It seeks out disenchanting and enchanting cultural drivers
affecting the individual and relationships on the job, dismantling
disenchantment and reinforcing enchantment. It is strategically woven into the
very fabric of the business culture.
- Constructing
Vitality for Business Success: The optimization of human diversity through
enchantment in an ethical pluralist culture builds vitality while contributing
to business adaptability and resilience. It provides for a safe space to be
creative: multiple, diverse voices collaborating for innovation.
- A
business constitution: The constitutional project mediates for the employee within a world that continues to be more complex and paradoxical, one that provides for higher opportunities, higher risks and higher consequences than ever before. The containment of the anxiety inherent in this complex environment is a central enchantment gesture for business success. With unease
and radical doubt permeating today’s identity fluctuations, businesses, through a constitutional project, can provide an ontological security based in trust, information and empowerment, aligned with the reason for being and operational philosophy of the business. This brackets out fear and dread, preventing melancholy and dysphoric environments from swamping creative will. It is at the core of the constitutional guarantee for
recognition and dignity. It orients the individual to a purpose and with freedom. The constitutional project of any large scale multicultural (global) organization should embark on a stakeholder dialogue to outline the following: the grammar of conduct including an ethical and values system, a consequence management system including a fairness doctrine and regulatory system, the business vision, mission, objectives, empowerment guidelines and team collaboration principles.
1 C. Taylor, The Sources of the Self; The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1989, pgs. 38-40
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