Responses – week of 5/18 – Toni

1) As I published in my response to Dan’s response (albeit in too lengthy of a post–due apologies) about Why Diversity Matters; I want to be thrilled about all those numbers,  I truly do.  However, I would be very interested to research the “minorities” or the “diverse groups” that represent their statistics, to see what their quality of life is.  How they think and feel about representing that for that company “doing that for them”, and how diverse are the actual environments they are in every day?  Not just how many of each “minority category” works for the entirety of a company, but also where they fall in salary brackets; how fulfilling is their work; do they feel challenged enough or too challenged;  are there hierarchy regimes despite the diverse numbers, or even within the diverse numbers?  Diversity is never as simple as numbers to me, and I feel it’s better to have truthful discrimination than false diversity so we can appropriately scope the root of the problem of discrimination.

3) Addtionally, I’ve been fascinated by the term “organizational culture” for most of my professional life, so I really enjoyed the direct quotes and how they display it to be such an interpretive phrase. When I look at the word “culture” itself, it seems organizations want it to mean both the noun and the verb of itself at the same time.  Unfortunately, I would likely argue that this has become problematic.  I’ve seen it all too often used to discriminate rather than include.  If you don’t “fit in” with the culture of a company, usually you must leave.  This makes me ponder the theory of culture, not culture theory.  That, isn’t it true, that when you introduce something new to any “culture”, there will always be change?  Isn’t that how culture is defined as healthy, by its progression (change)?  Is organizational culture just the biases of a company? Do we really need this idea of “organizational culture”? Does it actually work? And finally, what does it even mean for it to work

Intro Toni Salisbury

Hello everyone, I am Toni Salisbury and I’m working toward a second bachelor’s degree in Cybersecurity Administration, and this course is one of my required courses to complete my degree.  However, I’m very much looking forward to it!  I’ve really enjoyed all the writing classes I’ve been required to take for this degree, they seem to open up in some new way, how I think of writing and how I think of myself as a writer, even though I’ve been writing (professionally–mostly plays/scripts) for quite some time.  I’m working toward my degree part-time, entirely online, as I currently reside in NYC.  I’m a theater artist in NYC and have been for going on 11 years now; however, I’m also an employee of Syracuse University.  My day job is the Administrative Specialist for a theater intensive program for seniors in the drama school, where they come study with us in NYC for their final semester of college.  As I mentioned, I’ve taken all my Syracuse University courses online so far, and my best advice is be very communicative with the instructor when you have any issues, and try to stay on top of the work and deadlines as much as possible.  Don’t wait until the last minute!  These all-online courses can really catch up to you. I find them in some ways even more rigorous than in-person classes, most of the time.  I look forward to learning with you all!