ORGL 5405 - Diversity and Organizational Communication
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2020 / Summer 2021
This course examines how we construct our social identities through everyday communication and how these identities intersect in complex ways to shape and influence organizational life. In other words, this course reframes social identities like gender, race, sexuality, and so forth as something that we do through ongoing communication at work, rather than as something we are or have and merely bring to work. Importantly, this shift in perspective underscores how systems of inclusion and exclusion that seem to be 'just the way things are' are actually made by us as we all participate in seemingly mundane, everyday dynamics of identity and power. In shifting attention from people to everyday practice ' it points toward innovative ways we can intervene in the current state of affairs and cultivate organizations that better understand and value difference and diversity. Accordingly, students will learn to reflect on their own contributions to routine practices of identity and power and will learn to expand their options and skills for 'doing difference' at work. They will also learn to lead others in the development and maintenance of organizational practices conducive to meaningful diversity and inclusive work cultures.
