Achieving and Measuring Diversity: An Organizational Change Approach

Abstract

Immigration from non‐traditional, or non‐European, source countries has resulted in rapid and ongoing increases in the heterogeneity of North American urban populations. In light of these demographic changes, the integration of diversity is a necessity for organizations. It is also especially relevant to faculties of social work, which have a mandate to contribute to achieving social justice, access, and equity for members of non‐dominant, marginalized, and/or oppressed social groups. The integration of diversity within institutions necessitates a systemic organizational change approach, particularly within schools of social work, given their typically exclusionary and Eurocentric histories. Frameworks of organizational change for diversity integration are reviewed, including those specific to postsecondary institutions. The aim of the paper is to describe the process and outcomes of an organizational change initiative to achieve and measure diversity integration through the use of performance indicators at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto.

Keywords:

• Diversity
• Organizational Change

Notes

1. As Isajiw (1999) observes, the term ‘visible minorities’ ‘implicitly contains racist assumptions. “Visible” minorities usually means people visible to the whites. Whites are also visible to the non‐whites, but they are not included among the “visible minorities”. This makes the term non‐symmetrical, implying that the non‐whites are somehow a problem for the whites’ (Isajiw, 1999, p. 23). The term is used in this article only to present Statistics Canada data and is hereafter replaced with the term non‐dominant racial group(s).

2. This paper and the project it describes employ Henry & Tator's (2005) definition of race as: a socially constructed category used to classify humankind according to common ancestry and reliant on differentiation by such physical characteristics as colour of skin, hair texture, stature, and facial characteristics. The concept of race has no basis in biological reality and, as such, has no meaning independent of its social definitions. But, as a social construction, race significantly affects the lives of people of colour. (p. 351)