How Diversity Fails: An Empirical Investigation of Organizational Status and Policy Implementation on Three Public Campuses

Autor/in	byrd, derria
Titel	How Diversity Fails: An Empirical Investigation of Organizational Status and Policy Implementation on Three Public Campuses
Quelle	In: Education Sciences, 12 (2022), Artikel 211 (32 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (byrd, derria)
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
Schlagwörter	Campuses; Higher Education; Public Colleges; Diversity (Institutional); Organizational Climate; Equal Education; Race; Power Structure; Educational Policy + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Hochschulbildung; Hochschulsystem; Hochschulwesen; Organisationsklima; Rasse; Abstammung; Politics of education; Bildungspolitik
Abstract	Although diversity has been a guiding preoccupation in higher education for several decades, organizational diversity "practice," i.e., what happens when colleges and universities implement diversity plans, is rarely a subject of inquiry. As a result, there is relatively little empirical understanding of why diversity has failed to significantly advance racial equity on college campuses. In response, this ethnographic, collective case study draws on interviews with 54 respondents, archival and organizational documents, and campus observations to interrogate diversity practice on three campuses of different status in one public system in the U.S. This study employs Bourdieu's theory of practice, specifically "institutional habitus" as an analytic lens, to examine the influence of campus social status on diversity practice related to a statewide policy. Findings reveal that each campus has a unique institutional habitus--that is, a status-linked sense of campus identity, constraints, and opportunities--that prefigured and, on most campuses, derailed diversity practice in response to the policy. Only the middle-status campus made any substantive progress. By juxtaposing these findings, this analysis demonstrates that diversity practice does not exist within a campus vacuum; instead, it is inevitably influenced, constrained, or aided by the institutional habitus of the organizational environment. The paper concludes by arguing that organizational change efforts that recognize diversity work as a situated organizational practice that reflects broader power relations can better challenge inequities to spur transformative change across educational levels and contexts. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	MDPI AG. Klybeckstrasse 64, 4057 Basel, Switzerland. e-mail: education@mdpi.com; e-mail: indexing@mdpi.com; Web site: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/education
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01