ABSTRACT

Traditional organizational theories often reflect a web of dominance along vectors of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, and religion. In fact, the genesis of the field of organizational studies and management are rooted in an opposed binary logic of the West and the rest, which privileges cisgender, heterosexual (cishet) white Christian males as ideal workers. Further, leaders trained in higher education administrative preparation programs are often not given the tools to unearth systems of domination and transform the organizations that they lead. Despite training in management and administration, often higher education leaders are asked to educate racially, culturally, and ethnically diverse populations for which they are ill-prepared to serve. Additionally, executive-level leaders across all institutional types remain overwhelmingly white and male. Exacerbating these challenges is the fact that “traditional” organizational theories do little to provide guidance to leaders who may wish to develop the skills needed to advance the kind of radical change required to achieve the articulated “diversity” aspirations of most higher education institutions in the U.S. Also, the content of most organizational theory, higher education administration, and leadership courses inadequately prepares leaders to meet the educational imperative to serve increasingly diverse student populations. Thus, preparation programs inadvertently create a wide gulf between organizational aspirations and administrative competencies. A key mechanism to drive a narrowing of this gulf is better training of higher education leaders in doctoral and master’s preparation programs. As such, in this chapter, I describe my pedagogical praxis for organizational theory courses within higher education administration preparation programs. In so doing, I describe how to engage intersectional pedagogical approaches that center queerness and transness, while attending to white supremacist and colonial legacies of higher education organizations. Through this praxis, I aspire to redress enduring concerns about curriculum and pedagogy within administrative preparation programs.