ABSTRACT
Reflecting an interpretive shift in organization studies in the 1980s, D. K. Mumby and L. L. Putnam challenged the apparent preference by practitioners and scholars alike for rational decision-making. Like this shift from efficiency and rationality to emotionality and organizing, this chapter examines the organizational positions we privilege as scholars (both in general and in the communication discipline specifically) and argues for the need to shift our positions given the associated implications for diversity and inclusion. By critically examining higher education as the organizing backbone of academic life, authors are able to attend to the blind spots the very academics who produce knowledge about privilege and access (and therefore inclusion and exclusion) have, yet may not even be aware of. Transforming such long-standing systems substantially, not incrementally, is necessary to create meaningful change and a move toward more actual inclusive practices. This also generates tensions between tradition and innovation.
