Working with Differences

CGO uses a "complexity lens" to understand gender; through this lens, differences are seen as a simultaneous process of identity and institutional practices. The new insight gained through the use of this lens has led CGO to the development of a new theory to strengthen diversity efforts—a theory we call simultaneity. Simply stated, the theory works with the reality that all people have multiple identities, all of which are present "at the table" in any interaction and any of which may be more or less salient in any particular situation. CGO Working Paper No. 14 further explains the concept of simultaneity.

CGO uses three specific strategies to move forward the research, theory, and practice of organizational change using the theory of simultaneity:

  1. Researching and publicizing the hidden stories at the intersection of race, gender, and class to help change dominant organizational narratives;
  2. Identifying, untangling, and changing the differential and material impact of everyday practices in organizations; and
  3. Identifying and linking internal organizational processes with external society processes to understand organization dynamics within a broader social context and a social change agenda.

CGO Commentaries No. 3 presents an excellent overview of CGO's approach and a summary of our learnings in this area of work.

PROJECTS:

CGO Workshop Gives Women Leaders Skills to Build Alliances Across Racial Boundaries

The Center for Gender in Organizations, in conjunction with Cheryl Harris and Ann Moritz, renowned consultants in the areas of gender, diversity and leadership, have created a collaboration to bring together a unique program designed especially for women leaders:  "Women leaders and Race: Building Alliances," to be held at Simmons School of Management June 16-17, 2006. The workshop combines the groundbreaking work of CGO scholars in the area of Working Across Differences and the skills and experience of Cheryl Harris and Ann Moritz. Designed for both corporate and nonprofit women organizational and board officers, managers, founders and human resource professionals, the workshop leverages women’s collaborative leadership style. It also looks at innovation as a problem that can be solved by developing power alliances through dialogue and coaching. Ultimately, the purpose of the workshop is to share how this personal and executive development is possible and how it can have a positive impact on organizations, innovation, increased understanding of the changing marketplace and the realities of social change around us all.

To learn more and register, click here to download the flyer.

CGO Workshop Teaches Techniques to Address Bias as "Bystanders"

In the workshop "Tools for Institutional Change," held November 22, 2005, 100 Boston area residents, representing more than a dozen nonprofits as well as academics and consultants, came together to look at the role they can play as "bystanders" during incidents of bias in the workplace.

Bystanders can play a pivotal role in showing that the norms of valuing diversity and creating an inclusive workplace are critical. When there are deviations from these norms, bystanders can speak up, make room for silenced voices, halt a painful escalation, make a difference. The workshop provided specific examples and skills to empower bystanders to take on this challenging but important role. Shifting the focus off the "offended" and the "perpetrator" opens up space for everyone to own a role in shaping their organizations to be places where diverse contributions are valued. A Dec. 1, 2005 article in the Bay State Banner describes the impact of this training. (Click here to read the article.)  In addition, some of the suggested tools for bystanders are mentioned in a Dec. 22, 2005 article in Bay Windows.  (Click here to read the article.)

The Center for Gender in Organizations (CGO) at Simmons School of Management partnered with the Diversity Initiative of Third Sector New England to convene this groundbreaking workshop. Dr. Stacy Blake-Beard, CGO Faculty Affiliate and Associate Professor at Simmons School of Management, and Dr. Maureen Scully, CGO Faculty Affiliate and Assistant Professor in Management at University of Massachusetts-Boston, facilitated the workshop. The workshop was funded by a grant from The Ford Foundation, as part of CGO's continuing work on working across differences and diversity.

CGO Receives Ford Foundation Grant for Work on Diversity

In October 2004, the Center for Gender in Organizations received a one-year grant of $80,000 from The Ford Foundation. The grant will enable CGO to continue its groundbreaking research, publishing, and consulting work on diversity. Specifically, the grant will make it possible for CGO to develop concrete skills and guidelines for working across differences that organizations can apply to strengthen their own diversity efforts. Findings will be published as CGO Insights briefing notes, working papers, and CGO Commentaries. With the grant, CGO will also develop and deliver presentations on the topic of working across differences to non-profit organizations. The project will be lead by CGO Faculty Affiliate Dr. Stacy Blake-Beard, with contributions by other CGO faculty affiliates.

CGO Faculty Author Article on Conferences for Women of Color

In the article "Women Discussing Their Differences: A Promising Trend," Dr. Evangelina Holvino, CGO Senior Research Faculty, and Dr. Stacy Blake-Beard, CGO Faculty Affiliate, discuss the importance of conferences that bring women of color together to dialogue, network, and develop skills and strategies to enhance their advancement and organizational contributions. These conferences respond to a pressing need for working women to come together in new forums. They also represent an important trend toward cross-race and ethnic dialogue in the workplace that warrants encouragement and further discussion.

What is the purpose of meetings such as these and why are we seeing more of these events organized and filled to capacity throughout the country? Drs. Holvino and Blake-Beard were instrumental in organizing one of these conferences: "Professional Women of Color: Patterns in the Tapestry of Difference," held in May 2004 (see below for more on this conference).

In the article, which appears in the Summer 2004 issue of The Diversity Factor, they share their experiences and learning by providing an overview of what these conferences are about, discussing why they are needed, noting important dynamics that affect the discussions that take place at these conferences, and identifying some of the conditions that support their success.

Professional Women of Color: Patterns in the Tapestry of Difference

On May 6, 2004, the Center for Gender in Organizations and the Simmons School of Management hosted the conference "Professional Women of Color: Patterns in the Tapestry of Difference," part of Working Mother's best companies for women of colors initiative. Nearly 200 women came together with the purpose of promoting a deeper dialogue among women both within and across racial/ethnic groups in order to identify barriers and helpful strategies for working across differences for increased organizational excellence.

Keynote speakers at the conference included CGO Senior Research Faculty Evangelina Holvino and Gail Snowden, FleetBoston Financial Executive Vice President, and the highlight of the day was a lively town hall session led by Emmy award-winning media commentator Callie Crossley. (Click here for a full list of speakers and agenda for the event.)

Dr. Holvino's keynote was published as CGO Commentaries No. 5, "Women in Organizations: Why Our Differences Matter and What to Do About It" in December 2005. (Click here to read CGO Commentaries No. 5.)

The conference received coverage from the Boston Globe, WBZ-AM radio (Boston), Christian Science Monitor, and Black Enterprise online.

New Strategies for Working Across Differences: The Problematic Moment Approach

The Center for Gender in Organizations, in collaboration with Chaos Management, has developed a new technique for working across differences. Called the Problematic Moment Approach, it is a method that seeks to change established patterns of conversations in groups so that members can identify and address the unacknowledged differences that constrain the attainment of their organizational goals. Problematic moments occur in groups when an uncomfortable theme that members are collectively avoiding is raised. They are characterized by collective discomfort, sudden silence or din, and the feeling that the group is unable to move on. CGO Insights No. 19, Enhancing Working Across Differences with the Problematic Moment Approach, explores the approach and its usefulness in working across differences. On April 15, 2004, CGO hosted the workshop "Engaging with Problematic Moments to More Effectively Work Across Differences" to explore the idea of a problematic moment in order to identify the difficult questions that need to be asked when building coalitions between affinity groups and managing differences in work teams.

Event: "Beyond Diversity: Working Across Differences for What?"

The second event in CGO's 2003-2004 events series Gender at Work: A BOLD New Perspective, "Beyond Diversity: Working Across Differences for What?" held on November 4, 2003, questioned whether "diversity" is just another buzzword. A panel of three CGO faculty who have done extensive research in the area discussed how new perspectives and strategies about social identities can make diversity and organizational change efforts successful. Presenters: Dr. Evangelina Holvino, Dr. Bridgette Sheridan, and Dr. Gelaye Debebe.

Click here to read CGO Commentaries No. 3, which summarizes the presentations made at this event.

Working with Differences in Global Contexts: Collaborative of International Feminist Organizations

Begun in the fall of 2000 and concluded in June 2004, this project supported collaborative learning and organizational strengthening amongst six global women's-rights-in-development organizations funded by the Ford Foundation. This support program, convened by CGO, serves as one component of the larger Ford Foundation Initiative to ensure the sustained and effective contribution of these well-established organizations to advancing the field of women's rights in development and gender equity globally. CGO worked with the Collaborative of International Feminist Organizations (CIFO) to strengthen each of the six member organizations by providing grant money to assist them in undertaking organizational innovations or experiments.

Through our work with CIFO, CGO identified important principles at the intersection of organizational collaborations and working across differences in international contexts. We are currently translating these learnings into theory. In June 2003, CGO's Dr. Evangelina Holvino and Dr. Bridgette Sheridan presented a paper, "Social Identities and Identity Politics: The Dilemmas of Working with Differences in Global Contexts," at the Gender, Work and Organization International Conference in England. The findings from the CIFO project are included in CGO Commentaries No. 3, "Beyond Diversity: Working Across Differences for Organizational Change."

Practices for Working Across Differences: Workshop

On January 21, 2003, CGO convened a workshop on Mapping Practices for Working Across Differences. We convened twelve change agents and academics for a daylong workshop to:

  • Expand on the "principles, skills, and practical actions" that can be used to effectively work across differences in organizations;
  • Map practitioners' and internal change agents' own principles from their own practices; and
  • Codify the practical actions in ways that would be helpful to academics, practitioners, and internal change agents.

We began the day by presenting CGO's conceptual framework for working across differences as well as some of the major learnings and questions that came out of the June 2002 workshop. During the June 2002 workshop we attempted to develop and refine what we were calling "tools" for working across differences; we used the briefing note as a frame for our work together over the course of one and a half days. At the January 2003 workshop, we moved from talking about "tools" to talking about "practices". The term "practices" captures what other terms—e.g., skills, practical actions, tools—do not, which is the process of reflecting/thinking and doing.

After reviewing and discussing the proposed framework the group participated in collective "mind mapping" that documented practices and experiences in working across differences at the interpersonal, group, organizational, and societal level. This mapping informs the principles and practices that CGO outlined in CGO Insights No. 17: "Working Across Differences: Diversity Practices for Organizational Change."

Building Alliances Across Differences for Organizational Change and Equity: Workshop

Many organizations worldwide are grappling with both the opportunities and the challenges of working with the differences that arise in increasingly multicultural and diverse organizations. In order to initiate and create sustainable organizational change, coalitions and alliances between diverse groups is often needed. However, we have learned that these alliances are challenging to build and sustain. The demand for strategies and approaches for working across social identity and cultural differences is urgent. In our work with change agents, we have found great interest in exploring and enhancing both the understanding of the processes and tools for building successful allliances and coalitions for organizational change.

In June 2002, CGO convened a group of approximately 35 practitioners and scholars for a workshop entitled Building Alliances Across Differences for Organizational Change and Equity.

The objectives of the workshop were:

  1. to discuss and expand on learnings gathered by CGO during the previous three years of work on the theme of building alliances across differences for organizational change and equity;
  2. to provide opportunities to apply the lessons from our collective thinking to concrete situations faced by change agents in their work;
  3. to advance our understanding of skills and practical actions for working across differences and building successful alliances and coalitions.

As a starting point, CGO distributed a briefing note on its learnings on working across differences. CGO began the workshop by presenting learnings that described a "Stance for Working Across Differences," which included the requirements to have both a commitment to connecting and an appreciation of the simultaneity of identity. CGO also articulated some "Skills and Practical Actions" for working across differences that address: power equalization and empowerment; changing discourses, language, and voice; diagnosing problems in working across differences; and sequencing and managing the process of building alliances. The group explored the possibilities and limitations of the "stance" for building alliances for change and equity within work organizations. Participants worked in small groups to develop guidelines or tools that support building alliances for organizational change and equity.

Working with Our Differences: Bridges, Chasms, Alliances?: Conference

The Center for Gender in Organizations convened its learning conference,Working with Our Differences: Chasms, Bridges, Alliances? at Simmons School of Management on June 19 and 20, 2001. This event presented cutting-edge work that explored a range of possibilities for building understanding and joint action across social identity groups. The conference built on the learning from our 1999-2001 seminar series, Building Alliances Across Differences?

The first day of the conference included sessions which considered the processes and/or practices that enable diverse groups to sustain connections, examined barriers that can impede interaction among them, and looked at how exploring differences among us can effect meaningful and fundamental organizational change. The second day was devoted to applying these insights to cases about organizations that are actively engaged in efforts to make connections across diverse groups. Mel King, widely known as the creator of the Rainbow Coalition in the USA, delivered the keynote address.

Click here to download the report of this conference.

Building Alliances Across Differences?: 2000-2001 Seminar Series

Building Alliances Across Differences? was the title of the Center for Gender in Organizations' (CGO) 2000-2001 Seminar Series. In 1999-2000 Seminar Series, we explored new ways of thinking about constructing alliances, in order to help groups in organizations work together to transform their workplace in ways that advance both equity and effectiveness. In this series, we stepped back from the assumption of building alliances and instead focused on what some of the challenges are to finding ways to create alliances. We asked, who is it that wants to engage in alliance-building, and for what reasons? What are other ways of thinking about working across differences? Our seminar speakers drew on a range of disciplines and expertise to explore potential for and challenges to alliance-building in different arenas, amongst different identity groups.

What Does it Mean to be Chinese (and Female) in the United States?

  • Elena Yang, Independent Scholar

Imagine Coexistence: Narratives from Fieldwork in Rwanda

  • Sara Cobb, Executive Director, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School

Negotiating the Spirit of the Deal: Economic and Social Contracts in Longer Term Agreements

  • James Sebenius, Professor, Harvard Business School

Working Toward Multiculturalism: The Case of the Boston Women’s Fund

  • Carmen Chan, Co-Chair of Board, Boston Women’s Fund
  • Jean Entine, Executive Director, Boston Women’s Fund
  • Catherine Joseph, Director of Grants Program, Boston Women’s Fund

WomenBridgeRace: The Connections Between Racial Legacies, Intimacy and the Use of Power

  • Members of WomenBridgeRace: Rita Andrews; Toni Dunton-Butler; Delyte Frost; Patricia Wilson

Click here for a full list of all CGO seminars and summaries available for download.

Building Alliances Across Differences: 1999-2000 Seminar Series

The 1999 CGO conference Gender at Work highlighted two barriers to change in organizations around gender equity: 1) the splits and competition between different groups of women (e.g., white women and women of color, gay and straight women, women across hierarchical divides) and; 2) the splits and competition between women and men.

In our seminars, we explored new ways to address these barriers in order to promote equity and effectiveness in organizations. Scholars and practitioners of coalition theory, social movements theory, dialogue, and relational practice, to name a few, have experimented with and studied various approaches to building alliances. In each seminar we paired a scholar who focuses on alliance-building in different arenas amongst different identity groups to talk about their work with a practitioner whose work focuses on a particular approach to alliance-building (e.g., dialogue or coalition-building). This approach helped us to generate new ways of thinking about alliance-building with the goal of empowering and mobilizing different groups in organizations to work together to transform their workplace.

Relational Practice: Illustrations from Union Alliance-Building

  • Jean Baker Miller, Director, Jean Baker Miller Training Institute at Wellesley College
  • Kris Rondeau, Director of Organizing for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees’ Higher Education Division

Promises and Dilemmas of Coalitions from Varied Perspectives: Latina/Latino Political Organizing in Boston and the Role of White Men in Multicultural Coalitions

  • Mark Chesler, Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan
  • Carol Hardy-Fanta, Director of Research for the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, John W. McCormack Institute of Public Affairs, University of Massachusetts

Balancing Interests and Forging Common Platforms: Illustrations from Alliance-Building Within and Between Groups

  • Michael Piore, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Karen Proudford, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Morgan State University

Identity Politics, Coalition Building, and Social Movements: Illustrations from Alliance-Building in the Gay Movement

  • William Gamson, Professor of Sociology, Boston College
  • Sue Hyde, New England Field Organizer and Director of “Creating Change” Conference, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

The Politics and Practice of Institutionalizing Gender in a Post Apartheid South Africa (CGO Working Paper No. 12)

  • Robina Marks, Organizational Development Consultant and Doctoral Candidate at the University College of London

Click here for a full list of all CGO seminars and summaries available for download.

Problematic Moments Approach

The Center for Gender in Organizations has partnered with Chaos Management, Ltd. to explore the Problematic Moment Approach, which Chaos Management developed. The Problematic Moment Approach enables change consultants to make interventions in organizations at the level of discourse. It will be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about how the dynamics of differences, power, and politics can be seen at work in groups and how those dynamics connect to organizations and society.

Analysis focuses on what happens in a “problematic moment.” A problematic moment is typically a moment of silence experienced by a group that marks a disruption to a particular discourse of values, beliefs, and assumptions being constructed by the group. Problematic moments make visible aspects of practices, which might normally be naturalized, and therefore difficult to notice. The consultant collects data by videotaping a group at work “on-line,” identifies the problematic moments that occurred, and then plays back those moments to the group in an “off-line,” retreat setting. The group analyzes the underlying meaning of these moments with the help of the consultant. Finally, the group makes plans and takes action to utilize the discoveries made in their analysis.

CGO has co-sponsored several Problematic Moments Approach workshops and has used the method to help facilitate working across difference at its conferences and in its internal work. Dr. James Cumming and CGO Senior Research Faculty Dr. Evangelina Holvino, innovators of the approach, detail its usefulness and applications within organizations in CGO Insights #19, Enhancing Working Across Differences with the Problematic Moment Approach.

Gender at Work: Beyond White, Western, Middle-Class, Heterosexual Professional Women: Conference

The aim of the Gender at Work conference, hosted by CGO in June 1999, was to structure a dialogue that would allow participants to reflect on assumptions and advance their understanding of the integration of race, class, and gender in organizational theory and practice. Specifically, we wanted to work together to: 1) recognize and “unpack” assumptions about gender in organizations that implicitly or explicitly are based on norms of white, western, middle-class, heterosexual, professional women; and 2) further understanding of the implications of the interlocking nature of race, class, and gender for social processes and social identity within organizations.

To broaden our understanding of the intersection of the multiple dimensions of social identity of gender/race/class/ethnicity/and sexual orientation, we invited eight distinguished speakers who have worked and written extensively on this theme and also represented diverse disciplines such as psychology, legal studies, sociology, and political science. Speakers included: Lani Guinier, Professor of Law at Harvard University; Aída Hurtado, Professor of Psychology at University of California, Santa Cruz; and Joan Acker, Professor of Sociology at University of Oregon, Eugene. (Dr. Acker’s presentation is available as CGO Working Paper No. 5.) With the assistance of discussants, we then sought to apply the speakers’ ideas and insights to our work in organizational theory, research, management, and practice.

to order the report of this conference, Gender at Work: Beyond White, Western, Middle-Class, Heterosexual Professional Women, which is available to purchase from CGO.

 

 

 

CGO COMMENTARIES
CGO INSIGHTS BRIEFING NOTES
WORKING PAPERS
SEMINAR SUMMARIES
CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS