ABSTRACT
Colleges and universities have been described as complex social organizations that engage in a variety of transactions with their external environments (Etzioni, 1983). This condition is termed an open system by Katz and Kahn (1966). While the proliferation of diversity initiatives on college and university campuses may be owed to demands, pressures, and normative expectations originating in the external environment and penetrating postsecondary organizations through the connective web of open systems, this proposition is largely underdeveloped relative to other factors or variables in the higher education literature. Extant studies that do analyze environmental determinants of diversity initiatives fail to ground their assertions or observations in theory or an overarching theoretical framework that explains organizational response to diversity (see, for example, Morris and Parker, 1996; Bensimon, 1992). The failure to systematically examine the role of external forces in serving as an impetus for organizational initiatives related to diversity amounts to a major shortcoming in the current body of knowledge on this topic.
