1) According to the findings of the Gundermir article, Organizations should strive to create diversity policies focusing on multiculturalism and value-in-individuals. Gundemir defined the former as policies that explicitly acknowledge the positive characteristic of diverse social groups. The latter is defined as a policy that acknowledges each individual for their characteristics without explicitly addressing ethnic groups. Though I agree that our society must focus on developing company mission statements that vocalize inclusion, I believe that there may be more effective ways to increase the morale of all employees and create an open-minded environment without focusing most of our attention on mission statements.
Using the writing technique of framing what “They say” first has certainly helped me organize my thoughts and formulate my argument in a way that has set me up for further explanation. I agree that writing in this manner will help me stay on track and keep me from straying away on tangents.
2) My reading of the Gundemir et al article and the article on neurodiversity has been very thought provoking for me. I understand that our society needs to strive for continuous improvement in inclusion to become more accepting of everyone’s differences. This, I agree, will be beneficial to our society on many levels. I also acknowledge that there is still much work to be done as certain groups may be underrepresented in leadership roles in companies. Though I found it interesting, for example, that the Gundemir article states that African Americans hold around 10 percent of board seats in fortune 100 companies. This doesn’t seem to be drastically far off from the percentage of African American population in the United States of around 13 percent. On the other hand, the article on neurodiversity possesses a fact that is truly startling to me. That is that the unemployment rate for these individuals runs as high as 80 percent! At my company I work with and am good friends with people from many different parts of the world. But I can say that I do not know a single person that I work with who would be classified as non-neurotypical. I know that my company often addresses the importance of ethnical inclusion, though they have never once discussed the issue of minimal representation of the nuerodiverse community in any level of the business. I would be very interested to further explore this topic as I have some close ties with this. I have a great relationship with my fiancées cognitively impaired brother. He struggles to understand how to interact with others in certain situations and he does learn at a slower pace. Though I know that he could make positive contributions to organizations if more of them will adopt the practices at SAP, HPE, Microsoft and others included in Austin and Pisanos article.
Dan,
Your post made me think for a moment. Do I know anyone at the office who is openly neuro-diverse? I don’t know that I do. I’m certainly surrounded by many people whom might be referred to as “techie nerds”. These are folks who’ve got varying degrees of social awkwardness. Is that just painting them with a brush dripping in stereotypes, or are any of them actually undiagnosed or “closeted” neurologically diverse people themselves?
I appreciate your open communication about not knowing anyone in your company that is neurodiverse, and your shock at the 80% unemployment rate. I do remember that they mentioned that included other categories. I would like to know what those other categories are, myself. but to speak to what you wrote, this is precisely why I question “organizational culture” and how I have seen it used to discriminate and exclude. It’s not just with race, gender, age, the more “topical” minority categories, particularly in the tech industry, it’s also in the way some offices seem to feel the need to create a certain “type” of office, to create a culture. My example for this would be the “open office” concept. There is NO room for a neurodiverse person in that environment and they then can’t work there or “shouldn’t” because of the open office culture this company sets up in it’s mission. It does not surprise me at all that the unemployment rate is that high, unfortunately, but I would hope with today’s flexible work arrangement possibilities (i.e. working form home) this can be something that can change. And that the idea of “office culture” can expand to how culture creates itself, rather than creating culture. I don’t know how you will get around biases or discrimination “creating culture” as part of your mission. That’s a bold statement, I realize, but I do truly agree with it at this point in time.
You make an important point about the impact of the pandemic on our work culture, Toni–the significant increase in people who are working from home has led many from within the disability rights community to comment on how such arrangements have proven to be successful (when for so long people with disabilities who asked for such accommodations as flexible work places were denied). Here’s one such analysis: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01312-w?fbclid=IwAR2hy17T3MOeWZIyUVSOzeZrhH-DH4CpEQxq2P-pmTONVqhcgsYk3W12wPk
There are many, many more. Turns out, there’s a lot more flexibility available to a lot of people in how and where and when they accomplish their work than many organizations had ever allowed. (Obviously, this is not true for all jobs or all workers!!) But the last several months have opened up some important conversations about the nature of work.
The magic of learning, of course, is continually discovering more things that you didn’t know you didn’t know. When we listen to neurodiverse folks, we suddenly see a window open into a world that many of us didn’t know existed–a world of differences that may not be visible but are tangible and significant nonetheless. There is much more variety among human brains and bodies than we can see, and this is part of the reason why we need to ‘explode’ our often limited (and limiting!) definition of diversity. There’s far more than race and sex to concern ourselves with, and far more ways that having a diverse group of people affects the culture of that group beyond a mere public relations photo.