ABSTRACT
The ability of organizations to leverage their diversity is profoundly hampered by resistance inside the organization to formulating, implementing, and institutionalizing changes that would align organizational practice with a strategy to build inclusiveness. We argue that group identity and societal power position combine to drive intergroup dynamics that hinder most diversity initiatives before they can be seriously engaged. In particular, the sources of this diversity resistance are cycles of behavior that dominant and subordinant group members enter into as they attempt to negotiate diversity-related change. We describe patterns of resistance enacted by dominants and subordinants and then discuss how these patterns feed one another to hinder organizations in the pursuit for greater inclusiveness. We also suggest ways in which this resistance may be overcome so that organizations can realize the gains of inclusiveness. Organizations are increasingly feeling the urgency to learn how to build inclusive work cultures. The projections from the Hudson Institute report (Johnston & Packer, 1987) that
growth in the U.S. workforce in the 21st century would be dominated by non-White Americans have been replaced by the clear and present reality that workforce growth and effectiveness is impacted by a wide variety of differences and diversities. The differences that matter include not only race and ethnicity in the U.S. but people of all races and ethnicities from outside U.S. borders (Bradberry & Preston, 1992; Hays-Thomas, 2004). The critical differences in contemporary organizations also include gender, age, sexual orientation, able-bodiedness, and more, as well as ways of thinking, interacting, and viewing both the world and the work. Yet the ability of organizations to leverage these differences is profoundly hampered by resistance to formulating, implementing, and institutionalizing changes that would align organizational practices with an inclusiveness strategy. We suggest that the source of this debilitating resistance is complex, dynamic, and often elusive. In this chapter, we argue that group identity and societal power position combine to drive intergroup dynamics that hinder most diversity initiatives before they can be seriously engaged. We also suggest ways in which this resistance may be overcome so that organizations can realize the gains of inclusiveness.
