June, 2002

Class Notes

Cox, Chapter 2

Conceptual Model for Change

· Identifies main activities needing attention

· Shows how these activities relate to one another

· This provides a tool and brings cohesion to the efforts

· Detailed enough to give direction

· Flexible enough to be customized for differences

· Is continually assessed and refined over time

· Continuous loop learning

Leadership – the most essential element for change

· Establishes the vision

· Gives importance and priority

· Facilitates motivation

· Cultivates necessary conditions

Research and Measurement

· Collecting data for specific information needs – i.e. number of women in job categories

· Relationships between certain “data” – leading to causal factors

· Research – to define needs and actions

· Measurements – to measure results

· Systemic approach

Education

· Approaches the learning in more ways than just “training”

· Training

· Personal coaching

· More in later chapter

Alignment of Management Systems

· Includes policies, practices, rules and procedures

· HR activities – recruiting, hiring, promoting, retention, development, work schedules, work environment

· Assessment of competence for dealing with diversity

Follow-Up

· Implementing action

· Establishing accountability for results

· Capturing and recycling the learning so it becomes more and more precise

Model

· Systemic approach for transforming organization to new level of achievement

Introduction to Rothenberg

NOTE: The expectation is not to agree but to understand what they’re talking about and how they feel

Part I

Delineates how

· society forms our attitudes towards ourselves and others

· how hierarchies are established from such perceived differences

Covers gender, sexuality and class

· Looks at how we have been taught what’s “natural”

· Essays look at how our selves are subject to social construction

Emphasizes the economic and historical basic for socially constructed categories.

· Race categories – born of economic conflict

· Gender categories – born of economic conflict

· When economics shift – the categories may also

Are the social constructs real?

· Yes, if they have effects

Are they natural or inevitable?

· They are constructed historically

Many see differences as necessary and useful defining characteristics of human beings.

· Discussing issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class as social constructs, with no inherently “natural” meaning can be unsettling

· Some feel they’re being asked to eliminate differences – not possible

· What would society be like if no racial differences existed?

· Point is that the differences exist – it’s the way we put values on the differences that creates unequities