Promoting Constructive Multicultural Attractors: Fostering Unity and Fairness From Diversity and Conflict

Abstract

Enduring forms of bias and discrimination are well documented and pervasive in many organizations fueling costly patterns of destructive cross-cultural and multicultural conflict. Changes in these dynamics are often slow and beset with setbacks. In this article, we present a dynamical systems model of multicultural organizational change, which outlines how leveraging tension from such conflict can help break down destructive multicultural attractors, or change-resistant patterns of intergroup bias and discrimination, and help promote more constructive attractors through increased institutional accountability for enacting fair and just workplace reforms. By recognizing the complex and dynamic nature of attractor patterns of bias and discrimination and working with the resulting tensions optimally and strategically, we propose that they can provide energy and will for reforms that transform chronic patterns of multicultural relations from destructive to constructive.

Keywords

multiculturalism conflict dynamical systems discrimination social inequality organizations

E Pluribus Unum (“out of many, one”), the American motto derived from Aristotelian thought, captures the democratic ideal where the vast diversity of the United States citizenry yields a particularly vibrant form of unity and solidarity. Yet as Jon Stewart (2016) remarked recently in response to the Trump presidential election, “America is not natural. Natural is tribal. We’re fighting against thousands of years of human behavior and history to create something that no one has ever . . . that’s what’s exceptional about America.” Despite decades of tireless work by advocates of social inclusion, the robust and pervasive patterns of ethnocentrism, sexism, racism, nationalism, and oppression on which many of our institutions and communities in the United States were founded seem immovable (Stainback & Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012). Although more overt forms of bias and discrimination can seem to ebb, more implicit forms often replace them (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995), and in periods of uncertainty, economic downturn, or instability, overt discrimination often comes roaring back.

Today, the U.S. workforce is diversifying at an increasingly rapid rate (Teixeira, Frey, & Griffin, 2015), which is quite unsettling to many. A study conducted with 30,000 people in 40 American communities found that greater racial diversity in communities was correlated with a loss of trust and increased withdrawal from community life (Putnam, 2007). At work, more diverse teams face higher levels of tension, communication problems, interpersonal conflict, and less coherence (Ancona & Caldwell, 1992; Chevrier, 2003; Robbins, 2001; Townsend & Scott, 2001; Tsui, Egan, & O’Reilly, 1992; Vallas, 2003).

However, there is also growing evidence that effective management of diversity advances not only societal goals of equity but employer goals of efficacy as well (Phillips, Liljenquist, & Neale, 2009). Diversity has been shown to improve creativity, innovation, and decision making at work because it encourages employees to consider a wider range of perspectives (Bassett-Jones, 2005; Phillips et al., 2009; Richard, 2000). It is also closely linked with outcomes such as higher sales and revenue, numbers of customers, productivity, market share, and profitability (Herring, 2009; National Urban League, 2005).

On the other hand, mismanaging diversity can harm the bottom line by lowering productivity and workforce cohesion (Chevrier, 2003), dampening the morale and motivation of unfairly treated workers and those who witness unfair treatment (Goldman, Slaughter, Schmit, Wiley, & Brooks, 2008; Skarlicki & Rupp, 2010), and forcing out otherwise qualified individuals from employment resulting in significant turnover costs (Kantor & Crosser, 2016). It can also result in discrimination and harassment lawsuits, the costs of which grow into the billions annually (C. Burns, 2012; Dobbin & Kalev, 2016).

Despite these findings, women and minorities continue to be underrepresented in high-profile industries like technology, marketing and advertising, and in high-paying leadership roles across industries (see Dobbin, Schrage, & Kalev, 2015; Holland, 2016). So why is social inclusion in the workplace so painstakingly slow and recalcitrant?

In this article, we present a dynamical systems approach to multicultural organizational change that views organizational cultures around diversity and discrimination as attractors: entrenched, dynamic, and multiply determined patterns in systems that resist change (Svyantek & Brown, 2002; Vallacher, Coleman, Nowak, & Bui-Wrzosinska, 2010). In other words, diversity cultures can be understood as coherent patterns in complex nonlinear systems that are often unresponsive to direct, linear approaches to change. Viewed from this perspective, qualitative, sustainable improvements in diversity and multicultural relations are unlikely to occur without significant efforts to (a) interrupt and dismantle existing attractor patterns for more destructive multicultural relations and (b) establish and promote alternative attractors for more constructive multicultural relations.¹ By leveraging the tensions resulting from bias and discrimination optimally and strategically, we suggest that they can provide energy and will for reforms that transform chronic patterns of multicultural relations from destructive to constructive.

This article has three sections. First, we describe how organizational cultures of diversity and discrimination can be fruitfully understood as attractor dynamics in complex nonlinear systems. Second, we outline how the strength of both destructive and constructive attractors for multicultural relations is influenced by feedback dynamics between various organizational elements at different levels of analysis that reinforce one another to contribute to patterns that are particularly resistant to change. Finally, we offer a framework for constructive multicultural transformation involving processes and structures that research has shown to mitigate destructive dynamics and promote more constructive relations.

Attractor Dynamics: A Dynamical Systems Approach to Multicultural Organizational Change

Over the past decade, complexity science approaches to understanding organizational dynamics and change have begun to flourish (i.e., Lissack & Gunz, 2005; Marion, 2006; Moldoveanu, 2004; Schneider & Somers, 2006; Svyantek & Brown, 2000). These approaches view organizations as dynamical systems composed of sets of interconnected elements (such as individuals, norms, policies, and procedures) that change and evolve over time as they interact with one another. A change in each element therefore depends on influences from other elements, and so the system as a whole evolves in time. From this perspective, the effects resulting from any type of organizational change initiative (such as diversity training) will depend on influences of various other elements in the system (employee attitudes, norms, policies, leader behaviors, and so on), which evolve over time to affect the general pattern of interactions (positive or negative) between members of different identity groups. These approaches, derived from applied mathematics and physics (Liebovitch, 1998), offer a host of new metaphors, models, and methods for studying and working with organizational dynamics. One metaphor that has received much attention of late is the attractor (i.e., Svyantek & Brown, 2000; Vallacher et al., 2010).

Generally speaking, attractors are a subset of potential states or patterns on which a system converges over time (Vallacher et al., 2010). However, attractors are patterns that are particularly stable and resistant to change and that tend to “attract” or draw in the dynamics of the system. Think of them like a gravity well or a strong individual habit, group norm, or organizational culture—forces that act to constrain or shape thinking, feeling, and behavior. Attractors tend to be robust because (a) they are multiply determined with no single cause, (b) their many causes are connected and interact through reinforcing feedback loops (where A and B influence one another along the same or similar trajectory as originally inclined), and (c) they are dynamic and always changing even though their general patterns remain stable (Vallacher & Nowak, 2007). Attractors for social relations are also resilient because they meet two basic psychological needs: They provide a coherent understanding of the world, including the character of our in-group and the nature of our relationships with out-groups, and they offer a stable platform for action, enabling us to respond unequivocally to changes in circumstances or to actions initiated by members of other groups. In this way they help us make sense of a complex world.

Attractors evidence three properties relevant to understanding and addressing organizational diversity cultures (see Vallacher et al., 2013). First, an attractor can be characterized with respect to the quality of its essential character or valence, such as how members of minority groups tend to experience their relations with members of a dominant group (generally constructive, destructive, mixed, or neutral). More constructive attractors draw people into thoughts, feelings and actions that are mutually respectful and beneficial, whereas more destructive attractors elicit more contentious, damaging, or oppressive intergroup dynamics (see Deutsch, 1973). Second, attractors can differ in terms of their strength or resistance to change. For example, the diversity culture of a particular organization may be reinforced by a set of deeply held and consistent beliefs, attitudes, norms, and policies with regard to members of out-groups, and therefore evidence a robust nature. Alternatively, if the diversity culture functions as a weak attractor, it may only be evident in certain pockets of the organization (like its espoused policies) and so be easily destabilized by discrepant information or recent contradictory events. Third, an attractor can be manifest, or one that has captured the current dynamics of the system and is therefore more evident, or latent, representing a less obvious potential for an alternative type of dynamic from that which is manifest. For example, there may be long periods of time where more passive forms of bias and discrimination are more pronounced in an organization (a manifest attractor). However, these periods may be punctuated occasionally by periods were more active and overt forms of racism or sexism come to the surface (attractor dynamics, which had been latent), or periods where qualitatively more tolerant and respectful behaviors and norms prevail (another distinct latent attractor).

Any organization with a history of relations between members of different groups is likely to have multiple attractors for multicultural relations, each providing a unique form of mental or behavioral pattern with different levels of stability and resistance to change. The various attractors that are manifest and latent within an organization constitute what is known as its attractor landscape: the range of relatively stable dynamics to which the organization is drawn (Vallacher et al., 2010). This means that the potential for qualitatively different patterns of social relations exist simultaneously within the system of the organization. For example, Figure 1 presents a visualization of a multicultural attractor landscape for an organization with four attractors that differ in terms of the three properties of attractors: (a) their character/valence (from destructive to constructive and from passive to active), (b) their relative strength/depth (from shallow and weak to deep and robust), and (c) their current manifest or latent status within the system (the black ball represents the current state of the system, indicating the current manifest attractor). In other words, most organizations will typically evidence diversity cultures, not one diversity culture, even when one type of multicultural dynamic is currently most readily apparent. This accounts for the sometimes rapid but often unsustainable changes that can be seen in behavior when an organization implements a new diversity policy, only to slip back into its old prepolicy behaviors over time. It has shifted from a strong, manifest attractor to a weaker latent one, and then back again.

Figure 1.

Attractor landscape for organizational multicultural relations.

Latent attractors are particularly important to understand because they determine which states are more possible and sustainable for a system if and when conditions change. For instance, if new legislation passes prohibiting LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) discrimination in hiring, organizations that have members with more experience recruiting, hiring, and retaining members of diverse communities (constituting a latent attractor for more constructive relations) will have a much more smooth and sustainable transition to full compliance than those with a staff with less experience with such procedures. This means that although efforts at fostering multicultural understanding, trust, and accountability may at times seem fruitless in the short run, they can help create or strengthen a latent positive attractor for intergroup relations, thereby establishing a potential dynamic to which the organization can suddenly switch if conditions permit. By the same token, the impact of low-level acts of stereotyping and preferential in-group treatment may not be immediately apparent at the cultural level in an organization, but can eventually create a latent attractor for destructive multicultural conflict to which the system can abruptly transition in response to some provocation that is relatively minor or trivial. If members of the LGBT community have experienced even slight forms of aggression or discrimination for some time, even a “well-intentioned” joke or comment at their expense by a member of the dominant group could spark a lawsuit or public protest. Critical changes in a system, then, might not always be reflected in the system’s observable dynamics, but rather in the creation or destruction of latent attractors representing a potential state that is currently unobservable.

Despite their resistance to change, it is important to understand that even strong attractors can and do change. There are three basic scenarios by which this can occur (Vallacher et al., 2010): (a) weakening or deconstructing a destructive attractor, (b) moving the system into a latent constructive attractor, or (c) systematically changing the number and types of attractors active in the system. These strategies will be elaborated upon in the final section.

However, it is important to emphasize that attractors are low energy states, which means that they are relatively easy to fall into and maintain or bolster and much more difficult to get out of or to alter significantly (Vallacher, et al., 2013). Think of how hard it is to change the sibling dynamics within most nuclear families. Changing the diversity culture of an organization can be every bit as challenging. Doing so takes concerted energy, will, persistence, support, and sometimes a shock to the system. This is where the pressure associated with conflict and injustice can play a crucial part.

The Strength (Depth) of Multicultural Attractors

As noted, attractors can differ considerably in their strength and resistance to change. The strength of attractors in social systems are determined by the number and quality of elements influencing the attractor at different levels within the system (e.g., individual, group, organizational, societal, etc.), but more important by the degree to which these elements reinforce or inhibit one another through feedback loop dynamics (see Vallacher et al., 2010). This means that the strength of attractors is not determined as much by their elements or structure as by their feedback dynamics. Stronger attractors are fueled by many elements across several levels of analysis connected mostly by strong reinforcing feedback loops and few or weak inhibiting loops, while weaker attractors evidence the opposite qualities. Decades of research on intergroup, cross-cultural, and multicultural conflict have identified many of the psycho-social-structural feedback dynamics that can combine to contribute to the strength of more destructive and more constructive attractors for multicultural relations (see Coleman, Deutsch, & Marcus, 2014). Some of the more central dynamics identified by research for both destructive and constructive multicultural attractors are summarized below at the individual, group, and organizational levels (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Dynamics conducive to destructive and constructive multicultural relations at different levels.

Destructive Attractors for Multicultural Relations Can Involve the Following Dynamics

Individual-Level Dynamics

Decades of research on social identity theory have demonstrated that the mere categorization of individuals into even arbitrary groups increases tendencies toward in-group bias and out-group stereotyping (Brown, 2000). At a basic neurological level, research with functional neuroimaging has found that simple exposure to images of members of out-groups can stimulate activity in the amygdala resulting in negative emotional experiences such as threat and fear (Bruneau, 2015; Cunningham, Raye, & Johnson, 2004). Studies using the Implicit Association Test also support this, demonstrating that most humans automatically associate more negative content with images of out-groups (Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, & Banaji, 2009). This establishes a baseline of out-group negativity that other dynamics can reinforce.

When individuals have been raised in authoritarian households (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950) or socialized to hold beliefs of in-group superiority, vulnerability, unjust treatment, helplessness or out-group distrust (Eidelson & Eidelson, 2003), or out-group intransigence (Halperin, Porat, Tamir, & Gross, 2014), these cognitions can align with and further justify out-group negativity. This increases the likelihood of selective perception of bias-confirming information (Canosa, 2009), and in turn elicits more hostile responses from members of out-groups through a process known as the self-fulfilling prophesy (Merton, 1948). As individuals perceive increased threats to their in-group, it heightens their ethnocentrism and feelings of in-group solidarity and further intensifies processes of stereotyping, bias, competition, and discrimination against members of out-groups (Brewer, 2007; Fisher, 1990, 2014). When these experiences are prolonged, they can accumulate and establish deep reservoirs of negativity that significantly affect subsequent perceptions and interpretations of out-group members’ actions and intentions (see Gottman, 2014). Over time, if these dynamics go unchecked, they can create strong attractors for destructive multicultural conflict within individuals—even before they actually encounter members of out-groups. As a result, judgments of the person become increasingly undifferentiated and unidimensional, organized around incompatibility with members of out-groups (Vallacher et al., 2010).

Group-Level Dynamics

Of course, strong individual propensities (attractors) for out-group hostility and contempt significantly increases the likelihood of negative intergroup behavioral interactions (Brewer, 2007). Significant cultural differences in values and beliefs can introduce another layer of tension, and challenge intercultural understanding, communication, and conflict management (Lewicki, Barry, & Saunders, 2015), with multiculturalism (multiple groups vying for resources, status, and control) complicating matters even more (Castro & Coleman, 2014). When members of groups begin to sense that their in-group is being treated unfairly or deprived of outcomes relative to a comparison group, it triggers a sense of injustice and further resentment (Walker & Pettigrew, 1984). When these experiences are prolonged, they can become particularly toxic and can mobilize groups politically against one another (Simon & Klandermans, 2001) and, under certain conditions, encourage a turn to coercive or violent means of redress (Gurr, 2000; Tyler & Lind, 2001). The identity-based conflicts that ensue have been found to be particularly unresponsive to standard methods of dispute resolution and to be much more likely to become intractable (Coleman, 2003; Rothman, 1997).

As the resulting conflict persists, the opposing groups can become increasingly polarized through in-group discourse and out-group hostilities, resulting in the development of polarized collective identities constructed around a negation and disparagement of the out-group (Coleman & Lowe, 2007; Fordham & Ogbu, 1986; Kelman, 1999). At this point politically motivated leaders who manipulate intergroup divisions and in-group sanctioning against any positive contact with the out-group can play an important role in further inciting and maintaining hostilities (see Kriesberg, 1998; Rubin, Pruitt, & Kim, 1994; Simon & Klandermans, 2001; Smith, 1998; Staub, 2001). Over time, these zero-sum identities are passed onto future generations through various socialization processes (Kelman, 1999; Toscano, 1998). Here, if unimpeded, we see the emergence of robust attractors for destructive multicultural relations at the group and intergroup levels, which can be fed by and feed the dynamics at the individual and organizational levels.

Organizational-Level Dynamics

In monocultural organizations, homogeneity is typically prized and emphasized and conflict is seen as needing to be suppressed, resulting in favored conflict management strategies of distributive bargaining and coercion (Jackson & Holvino, 1988). Monocultural leaders also tend to approach the management of conflict in multicultural organizations in a manner that fails to deescalate tensions, neglects attention to dominant power structures, and ignores the importance of reducing stereotypic thinking and behavior (Canen & Canen, 2008). This type of leadership behavior has been linked to bullying, silencing, low morale, divisive climate, and decreased organizational performance.

When multicultural interactions take place in the context of scarce or otherwise coveted resources (good jobs, better pay, promotions, office space, etc.; see Campbell, 1965), competitive intergroup task and reward structures (Deutsch, 1973), or a general climate of competitiveness (De Dreu & Gelfand, 2008), intergroup conflicts tend to intensify. This is also more likely to occur under conditions where exclusive social structures limit intergroup contact and foster the development of abstract, stereotypical images of the other (see LeVine & Campbell, 1972; Varshney, 2002). Similarly, researchers have found that situational cues can make members of minority groups vulnerable to social identity threats (Murphy, Steele, & Gross, 2007). Female math, science, and engineering (MSE) majors who watched an MSE conference video depicting an unbalanced ratio of men to women at the conference exhibited more cognitive and physiological vigilance, and reported a lower sense of belonging and less desire to participate in the conference, than did women who viewed a gender-balanced video (Purdie-Vaughns, Steele, Davies, Ditlmann, & Crosby, 2008). Contributing to this are steep hierarchies of authority and status where those at the top are typically members of dominant groups (e.g., White male Christians) and as a consequence of their position have better access to the goods and benefits available in their organization and less exposure to the harms (Deutsch, 2006). Challenges to power arrangements often triggers intense competition and conflicts over control (Gurr, 2000), as evident in many decades of labor management strife. The ensuing struggles can trigger a deep sense of uncertainty and confusion over rank and power, and can motivate two types of aggressive intergroup behavior: actions by those previously low in power to claim their rights and actions by those previously high in power to protect their status (Coleman & Ferguson, 2014).

The most pervasive aspect of destructive patterns of multicultural conflict rests on the fact that many marginalized groups have experienced long periods of institutionalized discrimination and injustice at the hands of dominant groups, fueling a deep reservoir of negativity, distrust, and rage, at times setting a lower threshold for destructive intragroup and intergroup relations (Deutsch, 1973, 2006). Here, patterns of structural oppression often operate where members of low-power groups’ most basic human needs for dignity, safety, and control over their life are jeopardized or denied (Azar, 1986). These experiences can be cumulative and traumatizing (Sue, 2016), and can result in a pervasive sense of powerlessness, frustration, and rage for members of these groups. The privileged circumstances of the powerful, however, often insulates them and contributes to their lack of attention (Fiske, 1993) and responsiveness to the concerns of those in low power until a crisis, such as an organized or violent act of protest, demands their attention (Deutsch, 1973, 1985). Over time, these dynamics feed powerful attractors for destructive multicultural relations, which can become institutionalized at the organizational level (Gray, Coleman, & Putnam, 2007), and fuel even deeper reservoirs for negativity between groups (see Gottman, 2014; Gottman, Murray, Swanson, Tyson, & Swanson, 2002).

Of course, these many components of destructive multicultural relations show up at different times in different places at work, but when they begin to fuel and reinforce one another across levels, and go unhindered, they can contribute to cultural patterns in organizations that are robust and particularly resistant to change. Across some threshold, they can become self-organizing (self-perpetuating) and therefore largely unresponsive to outside intervention.

Constructive Attractors for Multicultural Relations Can Involve the Following Elements

Individual-Level Dynamics

Neuroscience research has found that the effects of out-group images on amygdala stimulation and negativity can be mitigated when the out-group member is also perceived to be a member of an in-group or shares common goals (Bruneau, 2015; Cikara & Van Bavel, 2014). This is supported by decades of research demonstrating the fundamental importance of perceptions of positive interdependence and similarity between people on constructive conflict and intergroup dynamics (Deutsch, 1973, 2006). Individuals raised with more inclusive, self-transcendent values (Schwartz, 1992) also tend to act more cooperatively and constructively with outsiders (Fry & Miklikowska, 2012). Such value orientations have been demonstrated to inhibit the tendency to automatically discriminate based on negative stereotypes of out-groups (Devine, 1989).

Research on different forms of individual-level complexity (cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social identity complexity; Koo & Kim, 1999; Koo, Han, & Kim, 2002; Liht, Suedfeld, & Krawczyk, 2005; Roccas & Brewer, 2002; Winter, 2007) has found strong links between higher levels of complex thinking, feeling, acting and identification, and more positive intergroup experiences and relations. This is particularly relevant in situations of conflict, where the pull toward oversimplification of the other into “us versus them” can be great (see Conway, Suedfeld, & Tetlock, 2001). Higher levels of tolerance for uncertainty (Frenkel-Brunswik, 1951), openness to difference (Costa & McCrae, 1992), bias awareness (Brewer, 2007), cultural intelligence (Gelfand, Erez, & Aycan, 2007), and self-regulation (Mischel, DeSmet, & Kross, 2014) have been also found to constrain impulses to react destructively to out-group encounters before consideration of the consequences. Finally, Johnson and Johnson (1989, 2005) have found ample evidence supporting the importance of developing the knowledge and skills for enacting constructive conflict resolution in promoting more positive intergroup relations. When these distinct individual elements combine and reinforce one another, they can help diminish a sense of out-group threat and promote a more tolerant, trusting, and constructive attractor for multicultural relations within individuals.

Group-Level Dynamics

A variety of group-level dynamics have been found to reinforce more positive multicultural relations. Cultural value orientations of a more harmonious, flexible, and tolerant nature tend to promote more constructive intergroup relations (Fry & Miklikowska, 2012; Gelfand, Leslie, Keller, & de Dreu, 2012). When schools, organizations, and communities provide early exposure to tolerant attitudes and effective conflict management skills, the effects trickle up, eventually affecting emergent social norms and more constructive group climates (Johnson & Johnson, 2005; Sandy & Boardman, 2001). The attitudes and skills for cooperative interdependence described at the individual level are typically induced, developed, and maintained by task, goal, and reward structures at the intergroup level that incentivize working together across group identities (Johnson, 2002). These conditions tend to establish cooperative expectations and processes that are self-perpetuating, a dynamic labeled the Crude Law of Social Relations (Deutsch, 1973). Similarly, group norms instigating taboos against intentional acts of bias and discrimination foster less intergroup disharmony (Fry, 2006). In dynamical systems terms, these dynamics help establish repellers (the opposite of attractors) for destructive interactions.

Research also suggests that groups that maintain equal and equitable relations between men and women also tend to evidence less intergroup aggression (Alban & Druckman, 2012; Disney & Gbowee, 2012). The presence of fair and functional methods for achieving recourse for group grievances is a vital structure that has been found to help address experiences of intergroup frustration from deprivation and reduce the need for organized political protest (Gurr, 2000). Similarly, when policies and practices for procedural justice are more widespread in communities, they can have a mutually reinforcing effect, bolstering a strong climate for fairness and justice (Deutsch, 2006). When these conditions and processes combine at the group and intergroup levels, we can see the emergence of a robust attractor for constructive multicultural relations, which can be fed by and feed the dynamics at other levels.

Organizational-Level Dynamics

The organizational levers for promoting constructive multiculturalism are many. One of the most robust findings from research on constructive intergroup dynamics is the value of cross-cutting structures (multiethnic work teams, sport teams, labor unions, social groups, etc.) for connecting members of different ethnic groups, building relationships, and mitigating escalation of conflict when it occurs (LeVine & Campbell, 1972; Varshney, 2002). In more multicultural organizations, conflict is often viewed as a natural and inevitable process requiring management skills of action learning, consensus building, and other forms of collaborative problem solving (Jackson & Holvino, 1988). Accordingly, programs in constructive conflict resolution and creative problem solving for employees can lead to more creative solutions, innovation, and breakthroughs to mutual problems, thus increasing positivity in the system and reinforcing the value of constructive conflict management (Johnson & Johnson, 2012; Tjosvold, 1998).

In a study assessing data from 708 private sector establishments from 1971 to 2002 (Kalev, Dobbin, & Kelly, 2006), researchers found that of the three most common approaches to enhancing diversity and antidiscrimination within organizations (establishing institutional responsibility, moderating managerial bias, and promoting inclusion through supportive networks) efforts to establish organizational responsibility for diversity led to the broadest increases in managerial diversity. The study found that establishing structures for planning and monitoring diversity such as creating affirmative action plans for setting goals, devising means and evaluating progress on diversity, and creating diversity committees and staff positions for providing oversight and advocacy have been found to lead to significant increases in managerial diversity (Kalev et al., 2006). Multicultural leadership in organizations can also help make great strides by evidencing commitment to diversity at the top levels, as does having a written policy, mission and vision statement, which frames the concepts of multiculturalism and diversity into a meaningful operational definition (Sue, 2016). Recent research found that programs that engage managers actively in recruiting and training women and minorities for positions in management also promote improvements in diversity outcomes (Dobbin et al., 2015), as does increasing the transparency of hiring processes, which encourages managers to censor their own biases because they expect others to review their decisions. Building mentoring and professional networking programs have also been found to increase inclusive hiring and promotion practices, particularly when they are implemented as a component of affirmative action plans that are designed and monitored by internal diversity staff positions or task forces (Kalev et al., 2006).

Another initiative that can help challenge both historical and contemporary assumptions of relative group status and shift toward dynamics of inclusion is to conduct multicultural audits and assessments of organizational infrastructure, including artworks, design, and accessibility (Purdie-Vaughns et al., 2008). Programs for increasing awareness of rank and privilege (McIntosh, 2010), for encouraging critical reflection around organizational power dynamics (Reynolds, 1997), for improving access to fair recourse when inequities occur (Lind & Tyler, 1988), and for promoting the prevalence of hierarchy attenuating values and ideologies (feminism, humanism, human rights, civil rights, gay rights, etc., see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) also go a long way toward establishing more inclusive, tolerant, and fair cultural environments. Once again, when these dynamics reinforce one another and affect dynamics at lower levels, strong attractors for constructive multicultural relations become more robust and institutionalized at the organizational level (Gray et al., 2007), which help fuel more resilient reservoirs for positivity and trust between groups (see Gottman, 2014; Gottman et al., 2002).

An Applied Framework for Promoting Constructive Multiculturalism in Organizations

Our applied framework builds on previous work on fostering constructive multiculturalism in organizations (Castro & Coleman, 2014; Dobbin et al., 2015; Kalev et al., 2006: Sue, 2016) and other complex systems approaches to addressing intractable problems (Coleman, 2011; Svyantek & Brown, 2000; Vallacher et al., 2013) and aims to better comprehend and improve the means for transforming longer-term patterns of destructive multicultural conflict in organizations. The approach begins with the premise that these patterns are durable attractors (multiply determined, dynamic, and resistant to change), and therefore recommends transforming the attractor landscape for organizational multicultural relations by:

Destabilizing: Leveraging shocks, conflict, tension, and pressure

Visualizing: Conceptualizing the inherent system dynamics of the specific attractor landscape for destructive and constructive multicultural relations

Deconstructing: Breaking down and weakening manifest and latent destructive multicultural attractors

Reconstructing: Bolstering or establishing robust attractors for constructive multiculturalism

Adapting: Monitoring, evaluating, and feeding back the effects of initiatives to the institution

However, note that shepherding change in complex nonlinear systems is not a straightforward matter. If the attractors are strong and driven by tightly coupled feedback dynamics, they will tend to be unpredictably responsive to any step-by-step recipe for change. Change agents therefore benefit from developing the capacities to employ the five modes of action described below in a flexible and adaptive fashion.

Destabilizing: Leveraging Shocks, Conflict, Tension, and Pressure

Given the intransigent nature of many destructive multicultural attractors, particularly those reinforced by the interaction of basic neurological and psychological tendencies, high-stakes competition over scarce resources, meaningful group identities, implicit cultural assumptions, hierarchical power arrangements, and long legacies of inequality, domination, and oppression, significant and sustainable change is hard earned. Change to these dynamics often requires either significant ruptures to the status quo or otherwise heightened levels of energy, attention, motivation, and political will. Nevertheless, there are two scenarios where the probabilities of changes in the attractor dynamics increase considerably.

Nonlinear Change Through Political Shocks

First, studies have shown that strong, enduring relational patterns often become more susceptible to change after some type of major political shock destabilizes the system (Diehl & Goertz, 2001; Gersick, 1991; Klein, Goertz, & Diehl, 2006). This is one form of what Kurt Lewin (1936) described as the necessary condition of unfreezing in change scenarios. For organizations, these shocks can come from different sources, such as intense episodes of conflict, crises, scandals, lawsuits, criminal investigations, and other unsettling events that happen within the organization, in similar organizations or in the broader society. Such shocks can interrupt or even derail the status quo of a manifest attractor—and the mundane, moment-to-moment automatic behaviors that usually shape our lives—and cause us to question the basic assumptions and behaviors that constitute them.

However, it is important to emphasize that systemic shocks, particularly to strong normative systems (attractors), tend to evidence nonlinear effects (Diehl & Goertz, 2001; Klein et al., 2006). This means that we often do not see any major direct or immediate effects from the shock for quite some time. Instead, shocks, like a high-profile sexual harassment suit brought against a company’s CEO like Roger Ailes at Fox, might lead to small changes in the behavior of individuals in the company that trigger other changes and so on, until the system crosses some critical threshold and transitions into a qualitatively different dynamic. This magnitude of change usually cannot be mandated and sustained from above as the attractor dynamics are too embedded throughout the entire system. However the impact of the shock may be sufficient to destabilize and alter some basic attitudes or norms or rules of interaction at the company, in time leading to dramatic changes in the company culture (see Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). This in effect can change the number and types of attractors active in the system.

Something resembling this appears to have occurred in the financial industry after it was rocked by a series of high-profile discrimination lawsuits in the late 1990s and 2000s (Dobbin & Kalev, 2016). During this period, Morgan Stanley was fined $54 million, Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch more than $100 million each to settle sex discrimination claims, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch settled a race discrimination suit for $160 million. Today, Wall Street firms have expanded diversity training and other diversity programs considerably (although the sustainability of the impact of these efforts is still in question; Dobbin & Kalev, 2016).

The challenge with depending on political shocks to pave the way for change is that such forms of nonlinear instability are unpredictable and are only a necessary but insufficient condition for constructive and sustainable change. Change does not always come from destabilization and when it does, it is not always for the good (see the Arab Spring). Other longer term efforts are needed to increase the probabilities for positive change, which are addressed in the guidelines below. Nevertheless, change agents should learn to better understand nonlinear forms of change and monitor periods of instability—ruptures in the status quo dynamics that may present unique opportunities for reform.

Incremental Change Through Optimal Tension

The second scenario for change in attractors is more incremental in nature, and based on the assumption of learning and social movement scholars that elevated levels of tension and pressure can be conducive to cognitive and social change (Coleman & Deutsch, 2014; Marcus, 2014; Roy, Burdick, & Kriesberg, 2010; Schein, 1993; Sole, 2006). Given the deep investment that most members of both high-power (see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) and low-power groups (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004) share in preserving the status quo, something unusual is often required to break the inertia, complacency, and automatic behavior operating and motivate change: Conflict!

Conflict and confrontation tend to increase energy and tension within us and between us (Lewin, 1936), and can increase attention to and motivation for increased equity and reform in systems (see Deutsch, 2014; Marcus, 2014; Roy et al., 2010). Tension has long been touted as the primary link between conflict and change (Deutsch, 1985; Lewin, 1936; Marcus, 2014; Sole, 2006): It can awaken us to concerns and mobilize and direct action. However, too much tension in a system can impair people’s capacity to think openly and creatively or to envision novel approaches to problems (Carnevale & Probst, 1998; Coleman & Deutsch, 2014; Schein, 1993). Tension works to engage actors, but it can also adversely affect their ability to respond constructively. And introducing too much tension too rapidly can backfire and destabilize and lead to even higher levels of resistance to change (Schein, 1993). Optimal tension, therefore, is a state in which there is not too little or too much tension with regard to the challenge being faced. Thus, it becomes critical for change agents to develop the competencies and skills necessary to assess the levels of tension around a given set of challenges and to discover levers for increasing or decreasing it as needed.

Fortunately (for the purposes of change), most organizations are rife with multicultural conflict, whether latent or expressed. Most traditional approaches to conflict resolution tend to focus on reducing tension and seeking harmony and trust building between disputants when disputes emerge (Coleman et al., 2014). In contrast, many approaches to enhancing multiculturalism and social justice aim to increase tension—through activism, consciousness raising, confrontation of power structures, and other forms of social action—in seeking reform of mind-sets and institutions (Castro & Coleman, 2014). The current approach recommends a combination of both. By identifying and working with multicultural conflict and tension optimally, we have found that they can provide energy for reform, both individually and at the level of groups and organizations.

However, working effectively to initiate or leverage optimal tension is both a science and an art. Figure 3 provides a menu of strategies for decreasing and increasing tension in groups, depending on the main sources of the conflict, the overall levels of tension, and the relative needs for harmony and reform. They include the following: (a) decreasing tension from intergroup competition through bargaining, reframing issues, integrative negotiation, mediation, introducing cooperative task and reward structures, and various other forms of constructive conflict management (see Coleman et al., 2014); (b) decreasing tension over collective identity differences by clarifying biased assumptions and misunderstandings, sharing information, and dialoging over different values and experiences, and resolving conflict across differences respectfully and adaptively (see Gelfand et al., 2007; Kimmel, 2000; Lederach, 1995; Ting-Toomey, 2012); (c) increasing tension on the dominant group over group cultural differences by discussing them openly to raise awareness of bias, ethnocentrism, microaggressions, and discrimination and motivate reform. One process for managing this is labeled difficult dialogue facilitation (see Sole, 2006; Sue, 2003, 2013, 2015); (d) increasing tension on the dominant group by raising awareness of privilege, inequality, and social dominance and encouraging critical reflection on the relative distribution of power and access to resources of members of different groups, processes facilitated by promoting critical forms of reflection and conducting group power analyses (see Coleman & Voronov, 2003; McIntosh, 2010; Reynolds, 1997); and (e) increasing and sustaining tension on power holders through promoting awareness of historical legacies of injustice and mobilizing advocacy, protest, and litigation in support of establishing institutional reforms, feedback, and accountability structures (see Alinsky, 1971; Coleman & Ferguson, 2014; Sen, 2003; Sharp, 1973). These strategies, which can seem at odds with one another, can be employed by different actors in an organization (ombudsmen, human resource staff, managers, students, union organizers, etc.), or by the same actors in some mixed or iterative form. Ideally, however, the goal is to keep the multicultural agenda and issues salient and sufficiently motivating to mobilize changes in mindsets and institutions.

Figure 3.

Strategies for optimal conflict management.

Here is one example of an approach to leveraging optimal tension. Research by Sue (2015) has found that candid racial dialogues between members of different racial groups can be an important means toward racial healing because they can lessen the power of racism, make hidden biases visible, and facilitate understanding of different worldviews. Opportunities for racial dialogues often present themselves in cross-racial training and supervision at work. Such dialogues are made more difficult when they involve an unequal status relationship of power and privilege between the participants, and hidden disparaging messages to People of Color (racial microaggressions), often triggering intense emotional responses. The explosive nature of such dialogues can make it difficult for participants to understand one another’s points of view, but effective facilitation of them can be a vital and necessary component of multicultural education.

Our colleague Ken Sole (2006) designed a process for facilitating difficult dialogues on conflict and difference that works with optimal tension. Two facilitators work with small, diverse groups of 10 to 12 individuals usually over a full week, supporting both their entry into the process beforehand as well as their reentry at work after the workshop through phone contact. During the week, the cofacilitators introduce various stimuli (e.g., questions, images, exercises, cases, ideas) to initiate discussion and increase tension, working for short sessions of 45 minutes and then breaking for 10 minutes to continually monitor and assess the level of pressure and distress in the group (often asking each other, “Is anyone in trouble?”). The discussions have the spontaneous feeling of jazz music, where the group is encouraged to follow their own thoughts and interests together within the structure of the sessions. Facilitators should be skilled at increasing and decreasing the tension in the group (through provocative images, humor, silence, candor, and the introduction of ideas from social science), to help manage the conditions for optimal learning and reflection. Often, these facilitators work with various intact work groups of individuals from the same organization, over time building a language and capacity within the institution to take on broader initiatives for structural reform. This example illustrates the potential for reform that can come from artfully combining tension, confrontation and pressure tactics with constructive facilitation and conflict resolution processes.

Visualizing: Conceptualizing the Inherent System Dynamics of the Specific Attractor Landscape for Destructive and Constructive Multicultural Relations

The importance of gaining a local, holistic, and nuanced understanding of the discrimination and diversity dynamics of the organization with which one is working cannot be overemphasized. This is important whether one is an insider to the organization or coming in from the outside. Of course, this is often done through needs assessments: conducting archival research and interviews or surveys of the concerns and needs of the stakeholders. However, we have found that visualizing the data systemically can aid both the change agent and the other stakeholders in gaining a different and more comprehensive understanding of the nature of the attractor landscape with which they are working. Doing so can alert one to both the current states of the system as well as any potential states that may be latent. There are a variety of visualization tools that can be employed to help members of an organizational community better see and comprehend the attractor dynamics operating in their system (see Coleman, 2011). Here, we present one commonly employed in organizations: stakeholder complexity mapping.

Stakeholder Complexity Mapping

Complexity mapping is typically conducted together with diverse groups of stakeholders through collection of their stories, concerns, or visions for change in the organization (see D. Burns, 2007; Coleman, 2011; Körppen, Ropers, & Giessmann, 2011; Ricigliano 2012). It can take different forms, but typically begins by identifying the nodal focus of interest—the central phenomenon they wish to comprehend (such as constructive and destructive multicultural relations; Vandenbroeck, Goossens, & Clemens, 2007). Next, the more core dynamics are identified, which are those elements and feedback loops most closely associated with the increase or decrease of the nodal variables. After this, the maps can be built out further to help visualize the broader system of elements and feedback dynamics that are affecting the core dynamics upstream and over time. Complexity mapping not only allows us to capture the multiple sources and temporal dynamics of complex, embedded problems, but can also help identify central nodes and patterns that may be unrecognizable by other means. This method of visualization can not only enhance systemic understanding of the challenges faced but can also help motivate the energy and political will necessary for significant change.

To illustrate, Figure 4 displays a summary map of five stakeholder group maps that were generated at a multinational bank in the United States, which was plagued with high levels of tension between U.S. managers and their international employees. In response to the tension, the bank had attempted to mandate cross-cultural and conflict management training, which seemed to have little impact. Once mapped, certain structural dynamics of the problem could be identified, such as how the global economic decline and immigration status of the international employees made them particularly vulnerable and silent in the face of managerial neglect, while the values of the institution (financial acumen over social–emotional skills) fostered high levels of managerial insensitivity. Once identified, these dynamics could begin to be addressed more systemically and effectively.

Figure 4.

Stakeholder map of U.S. Manager—International Staff Tensions.

Diversity culture mapping benefits considerably from systematically considering both destructive multicultural dynamics (and the relevant reinforcing and inhibiting feedback processes) as well as the presence or potential for constructive multicultural relations. Tables 1 and 2 present two sets of questions for investigating and mapping the specific destructive and constructive dynamics of any organization, derived from the literature summarized in Figure 2. Working with diverse sets of representative stakeholders in small groups to generate different maps can help identify areas of differences and similarities in the experiences and perceptions between the groups. These different maps can then be presented and discussed in large groups and used as stimulus for dialogue and problem solving with regard to specific dynamics of concern or promise.

Table 1.

Questions for Investigating Destructive Multicultural Dynamics.

A. Competitive Conflict

a. To what extent do members of different gender, racial, or ethnic groups compete for scarce resources (promotions, salaries, office space, etc.) against members of other groups in your organization?

b. Would you characterize the people you work with as generally cooperative, competitive, or mixed?

c. Would you describe the culture of your organization as generally cooperative, competitive, or mixed?

d. How are most conflicts seen in your organization: as win-lose challenges, win–win opportunities, or both?

B. Collective Identity

a. How diverse and inclusive is your organization (in terms of group demographics, values, and cultural assumptions)?

b. What obstacles has the organization encountered recruiting, hiring, and retaining members of diverse communities?

c. What is your perception of the specific discrimination and diversity dynamics within the organization?

d. Have you ever witnessed or experienced a biased behavior within the organization? What did it look like? What was said? How did you react?

C. Culture

a. How are disagreements and conflicts concerning multicultural issues addressed within the organization? Through avoidance, domination, or collaboration? A mix of approaches?

b. What assumptions are men, Whites and Americans making about women, people of color, and Internationals in the organization?

c. What assumptions are women, people of color, and internationals making about men, Whites, and Americans in the organization?

d. How are these assumptions triggering conflict or limiting cooperation and effectiveness within the organization?

D. Power Hierarchies

a. Which groups have the most status and influence within the organization? Why?

b. Which groups create the rules, norms, policies, and expectations within the organization?

c. Is inclusion being framed as a problem for women and people of color to solve?

d. To what degree are acts or discourses of racism, sexism, heterosexism, or classism tolerated in your organization?

E. Historical Oppression

a. How has your country’s history of systemic discrimination and injustice toward women and minorities affected the organization’s efforts to be a fair and inclusive workplace?

b. How have your gender, racial/ethnic identities shaped your experience in the workplace and beyond?

c. Does the organization honor your identity and experiences?

d. What are the most salient issues facing your racial/ethnic group in the country, the organization, the work team?

Table 2.

Questions for Investigating Constructive Multicultural Dynamics.

A. Assistance and Cooperation

a. What is already working in your organization to build trust and understanding between members of different groups? Where are the networks of effective action?

b. How is cooperation and support across identity groups encouraged and modeled within the organization?

c. How have you benefited personally and professionally from working in a multicultural environment?

d. Does being a member of your organization provide you with a proud sense of group identity?

B. Awareness

a. What types of initiatives has the organization undertaken to increase bias awareness, microaggression education, and constructive dialogues about discrimination and difference?

b. What are one or two areas in which the organization has effectively increased positive multicultural awareness?

c. How has the organization balanced the need for group uniqueness and belonging among its employees?

C. Adaptivity Across Cultures

a. How does the organization support and reward cross-cultural learning, communication, and constructive conflict management?

b. How has the organization fostered a more connected and diverse team-oriented culture?

c. Does the organization celebrate inclusion and difference with regard to its artwork, holiday celebrations, and interior design?

D. Attenuation of Privilege and Injustice

a. What processes are in place to increase awareness of the rank and privilege held by dominant groups and the impact these power dynamics have on nondominant group members?

b. How does the organization intentionally encourage the leveraging of diverse insights, experiences, and viewpoints in important decision-making processes?

c. Does your workplace have fair and effective dispute resolution mechanisms that are easily accessible to members of all identity groups?

E. Accountability

a. What steps have been taken to establish institution-wide resources and accountability mechanisms for promoting and tracking diversity and fairness within the organization?

b. How is critical reflection about social justice embedded into the organization’s change and reform initiatives?

c. Have you been made fully aware of your rights for fair workplace treatment under state and federal law?

Deconstructing: Breaking Down and Weakening Manifest and Latent Destructive Multicultural Attractors

Once a comprehensive but nuanced understanding of the local dynamics contributing to more destructive patterns of multicultural relations is identified through mapping, stakeholders can begin to strategize and work actively to break down or mitigate these dynamics. The objective here is simply to make destructive multicultural attractors weaker and less attractive. The exact nature of such strategies is dependent on the specifics of the local mapping, but typically involve the following actions:

Decoupling Reinforcing Feedback Loops Within the More Central Destructive Dynamics

After a system is mapped, it is often useful to start to identify how the core destructive dynamics of the system are reinforcing one another, and to consider means for decoupling such loops. For example, if hostilities and divisions between members of certain groups are feeding tendencies for selective perception of bias-confirming information (Canosa, 2009), and in turn eliciting more hostile responses from members of out-groups through self-fulfilling prophesies (Merton, 1948), educating members of both groups on these tendencies and their consequences can serve to limit their strength. Similarly, if members of marginalized groups sense that their in-group is being treated unfairly or deprived of outcomes relative to the dominant group and so begin to mobilize politically, providing a fair and functional method for achieving recourse is likely to help reduce the experience of relative deprivation and therefore the need for organized protest (Gurr, 2000).

Introducing Inhibiting Feedback Loops

A more durable approach to deconstructing destructive multicultural dynamics is to bolster or put in place inhibiting feedback loops, or checks on the system’s negative tendencies. For instance, gathering perceptual data on how members of different groups experience the climate of diversity in an organization and then feeding back this information to the organization in a timely and iterative manner can serve as a type of early-warning system, alerting decision makers to increasing reservoirs of negativity for different groups. Similarly, intentionally introducing and institutionalizing taboos against out-group discrimination or cross-cutting structures for formal and informal intergroup contact can go a long way to mitigating tendencies for in-group–out-group stereotyping and bias.

Deconstructing Attractors From the Bottom-Up

A third approach to weakening destructive attractors is not to confront them directly (which can elicit strong resistance) but to introduce smaller changes to their lower level elements. Research has shown that global mental states such as strong identities, attitudes, and fervent beliefs regarding “truths” can be effectively disassembled into the different component parts that constitute them. Doing so can create the potential for a wholesale change in people’s understanding of their own and others’ actions (Vallacher & Wegner, 2012). For example, pointing out multiple exceptions to a negative out-group stereotype can degrade the influence of the stereotype on behavior. Similarly, drawing attention to the specific gendered terms many of us use automatically to characterize “good leaders” (strong, forceful, decisive, independent, etc.), can destabilize these automatic associations and affect whom we come to see as effective leaders. Likewise when discussing polarizing issues over racial or ethnic differences, it helps frame the discussions less in global moral terms of right and wrong, but rather in more specific terms of exact behaviors, policies and procedures that harm or hinder members of disenfranchised groups. When lower level elements become decoupled from more global beliefs or principles, they can become reconfigured into an entirely different pattern (e.g., a more positive view of the out-group or of female leaders). It is like offering small adjustments in the mechanics of a tennis stroke that lead to radical changes in the player’s overall game. The point is that attacking a destructive (global) pattern directly is likely to intensify rather than weaken it, because of the tendency for attractors to resist change. We recommend instead isolating and addressing lower level elements to weaken more destructive patterns from the bottom-up.

Reconstructing: Bolstering or Establishing Robust Attractors for Constructive Multiculturalism

In order for any social system to undergo a qualitative change in cultural dynamics, it must have a feasible and coherent alternative attractor to transition to. This is akin to an addict transitioning from a life of addiction to one of health and well-being. Alcoholics Anonymous argues that to do so, people must radically change the “people, places and things” in their life. In other words, they need an alternative (or former) life to transition to, which often takes a great deal of effort, support, and willpower to (re)build. Fortunately, if there is a long history of relations between different groups in an organization and community, there are likely to be attractors for a few different patterns of interaction, some of which evidence more positive and trusting intergroup relations (as in Figure 1). Accordingly, identifying and reinforcing latent (positive) attractors, in addition to disassembling the manifest (negative) attractors, should be a primary aim of intervention. This can be implemented with respect to local dynamics and by following these guidelines:

Beginning With What Is Working

Rather than introduce new, top-down or outside-in initiatives for building rapport and trust between groups, it is wise to begin by identifying the people, processes, and initiatives already functioning effectively within the organization or broader community and build on those (see Praszkier, Nowak, & Coleman, 2010). Virtually every multicultural organization has some aspects of their culture or operations that encourages intergroup collaboration and teamwork and serves to foster rapport and trust. These may be in-role duties such as cross-sector teams or extrarole activities like sports teams or social groups. These existing initiatives can be an excellent wellspring of goodwill, and bolstering or building on them in a reasonable manner is one way to build on the organization’s own immune system—the tendencies within the organization to heal itself and seek a more functional state. Initial interventions should therefore identify and engage with these individuals, processes, and networks, carefully, and work with them to help alleviate the resource or other constraints on their activities in a feasible manner.

Building on Ironic Processes

The growth of latent positive attractors is thought to be an inevitable consequence of developing strong negative attractors (Vallacher et al., 2013). In other words, the stronger the dynamics of self-organizing negativity, the higher the likelihood that a latent positive potential is growing. This occurs because in emphasizing the negative aspects of a relationship while ignoring or downplaying its more positive elements, people often have to suppress or discount particular thoughts and behaviors (Macrae, Milne, & Bodenhausen, 1994; Wegner, 1994; Wegner & Erber, 1992). These suppressed elements can themselves become self-organized to promote their own more positive attractor. Very strong attractors will often exclude a wide variety of information discrepant from our main point of view. An explicitly helpful gesture by a member of an out-group, for example, is difficult to reconcile with the in-group’s negative attitude, and thus may be discounted as an anomaly. Should enough incidents like this occur, however, they may begin to coalesce into a new or latent attractor reflecting positive attitudes toward the out-group. Awareness of and attention to such processes can open up new possibilities for positive dynamics.

Working Upstream

Particularly robust systems of destructive multicultural relations are associated with strong attractors for destructiveness and weak attractors for constructiveness. Hence, they will often reject out-of-hand most strong-arm attempts to promote more constructive relations. Changes to systems in such states often emerge at the margins through indirect and thus less threatening processes that can allow key actors to consider alternatives to the current status quo. This means that initiatives that bring members of different groups together for purposes of “enhancing diversity” may meet much more resistance in these organizations than efforts with the same constellations of members that are focused on “learning new technologies” or “formulating strategy.” Such encounters, if managed effectively, can help pave the way for more direct change initiatives.

Adapting: Monitoring, Evaluating, and Feeding Back the Effects of Initiatives to the Institution

Most organizations profess to value accountability with regard to diversity but fail to establish measures to ensure it (Sue, 2008). Institutionalizing multicultural accountability requires the prioritizing and measurement of impact. Organizations will be well served to establish a systematic process for conducting periodic institutional monitoring and evaluation studies that track trends in the organizational culture with respect to discrimination and diversity. This should entail monitoring the overall culture with respect to diversity, with particular attention to inclusiveness and antidiscrimination patterns over time. In addition, they should evaluate and monitor the perceived quality of existing diversity enhancing initiatives in the eyes of different constituent groups. Self-report data should be complemented with hard quantitative data on the frequencies and types of grievances recorded by year and by constituent group, with similar data on recruitment, tenure, promotion, and self-motivated employee departures. Specific trends that could be monitored are (a) frequency of grievances by year; (b) types of incidents by year; and (c) frequency of incident by type and constituent category; including cross-tabulations of frequency and type of incidents by Title Nine categories (nationality, race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, and income/social class). Ultimately, the timely and transparent dissemination of this information, along with utilization of the findings for making organizational improvements, is key to bringing about sustainably transformative institutional change.

Conclusion

This article argued that because bias and discrimination remain pervasive in many organizations and change in this area is slow and plagued with setbacks, we could benefit from learning how more intractable nonlinear systems do and do not change. With this aim, we presented a dynamical systems model of multicultural change that proposes that leveraging optimal tension from conflict in organizations can help break down patterns of destructive bias and discrimination and increase institutional motivation for enacting fair and just workplace reforms. It also suggests that institutional and community initiatives motivated by multicultural grievances and aimed at positive multicultural reform require a sustained approach. Generally speaking, members of dominant groups that are typically at the helm in major organizations have less motivation or inclination to attend to the needs of more marginalized groups for any sustained period of time (Fiske, 1993), unless circumstances require it. With regard to multiculturalism, there is often a tendency for progress to be made in institutions on the heels of specific crises or threats to the status quo (law suits, high-profile cases of abuse, protests, etc.), only to recede when the attention and tensions dissipate. Thus, sustained multicultural progress requires an understanding of the necessary motivational and institutional conditions that foster sustained progress. These include leaders and institutions who can articulate a clear vision, mission, and pathway for reform; the implementation of both preventative (antidiscrimination, bias mitigation, etc.) and promotive (more inclusive policies and practices, diversity initiatives, etc.) initiatives, as well as the collection, analysis, and effective communication of data relevant to reform.

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

This article addresses bias, discrimination, and conflict across group differences, including gender, ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation, and nationality. It uses the term multicultural to characterize types of encounters where members of these various groups come together to work and attempt to be productive and achieve unity and fairness through their interactions.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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