Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Give a gift!
Explore HBR
The Latest
Most Popular
All Topics
Magazine Archive
The Big Idea
Reading Lists
Case Selections
Video
Podcasts
Webinars
Visual Library
My Library
Newsletters
HBR Press
HBR Ascend
HBR Store
Article Reprints
Books
Cases
Collections
Magazine Issues
HBR Guide Series
HBR 20-Minute Managers
HBR Emotional IntelligenceSeries
HBR Must Reads
Tools
About HBR
Contact Us
Advertise with Us
Information forBooksellers/Retailers
Masthead
Global Editions
Media Inquiries
Guidelines for Authors
HBR Analytic Services
Copyright Permissions
Manage My Account
My Library
Topic Feeds
Orders
Account Settings
Email Preferences
Account FAQ
Help Center
Contact Customer Service
Follow HBR
About Us | Careers | Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy | Copyright Information | Trademark Policy
Harvard Business Publishing: Higher Education | Corporate Learning | Harvard Business Review | Harvard Business SchoolCopyright ©2021 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School.
Race
Design Physical andDigital Spaces to FosterInclusionby Eric M. Anicich, Jon M. Jachimowicz, Merrick R. Osborne, and L.Taylor Phillips
August 11, 2021
Yagi Studio/Getty Images
Over the past year, commentators have suggested a wide range of
strategies for individuals and organizations to become more anti-racist.
While these strategies are important and timely, white backlash directed
at their implementation threatens to sow further racial division. Indeed,
white men, who commonly occupy positions at the top of organizational
hierarchies, are more likely to perceive diversity policies and messaging
as threatening, which can lead to more rather than less inequality within
organizations. This is not a new phenomenon: A review of data from
829 firms over 30 years revealed that diversity programs that attempt to
control managers’ behavior (e.g., mandated diversity training, grievance
systems, etc.) result in more rather than less bias and, as a result, tend to
produce the opposite of their intended results.
In the face of such backlash, leaders who aim to implement lasting
change in their organizations need new tools. While current strategies
primarily focus on changing hearts and minds, recent research —
including our own — demonstrates how an organization’s physical and
digital spaces play a powerful yet frequently neglected role. Here, we
show how leaders can design workplaces and processes to better
facilitate positive contact among members of different racial groups
which can, in turn, set off a cascade of positive diversity and inclusion
outcomes.
The Intergroup Contact Dilemma
Despite increasing racial diversity at the national level, the U.S. remains
highly segregated along racial lines. As the primary gatekeepers to these
institutions, white people have disproportionate control over the
pipelines to the most influential positions in American business and
society. Even employees within the same organization tend to self-
segregate along racial lines. This has profound implications for who has
access to society’s most elite institutions (e.g., Ivy League universities,
prestigious firms, private country clubs, etc.).
One challenge is that racial bias is difficult to meaningfully change, in
part because it is perpetuated by the (largely segregated) environments
in which people live and work. However, decades of scientific research
shows that a powerful way racial attitudes can change is through
intergroup contact. Even subtle and casual contact can be effective; for
example, during World War II, casual intergroup contact between
African American soldiers in the UK and the white local population
reduced prejudice among locals. In fact, modern-day residents of
communities in which more (vs. fewer) African American soldiers were
stationed during WWII continue to express less implicit and explicit
racial prejudice. Positive intergroup interactions, in turn, can create a
virtuous cycle.
It might seem reasonable to assume that greater racial diversity will
automatically lead to increased intergroup contact, and therefore, that
intergroup relations will improve as organizations become more diverse.
But that’s not what we found in our recently published research.
Specifically, we showed that as the racial diversity of their community
increased, white residents exhibited a stronger preference to cluster in,
and erect physical and psychological barriers around, more racially
homogenous residential and institutional environments, providing
empirical support for the claim that white America is (quietly) self-
segregating. In one experiment, we found that white Americans’
preference to structure their environments in this way was driven, in
part, by their anxiety associated with the prospect of interacting with
non-white others.
We even found evidence of these preferences embedded in the policies
of largely white-run institutions and organizations. Using data from
every tennis and golf club in the U.S., we demonstrated that clubs in
more versus less racially diverse communities maintain more
exclusionary policies (e.g., higher green fees, stricter dress codes, and
more restrictive guest policies) which are likely to further limit
opportunities for intergroup contact.
Our research therefore highlights a troubling dilemma: Many whites
may never reach the threshold of intergroup encounters that may be
necessary for organizations (and countries) to reap the benefits of an
increasingly diversifying society. Thus, higher levels of racial diversity
alone may not necessarily increase intergroup contact, and could even
contribute to more (not less) negative intergroup attitudes and greater
perceptions of threat. This view aligns with a recent study of Catholics
and Protestants in Belfast, Ireland, which found that those who had
more negative intergroup contact experiences in the past were less likely
to visit public spaces in areas dominated by outgroup members.
Changing Spaces to Change Intergroup Attitudes
Simplistic thinking about how intergroup contact should emerge may
further complicate matters. The binary view that intergroup contact is
something that should be either mandated or left to emerge completely
randomly belies an important middle-ground approach by which
intergroup contact can emerge as a consequence of thoughtfully
designed spaces. By embracing this middle ground, organizations may
be better positioned to develop attractive and creative strategies to not
only promote meaningful intergroup contact, but also create spaces that
make their employees feel truly welcome.
Our thinking is informed by the work of the famous psychologist, Kurt
Lewin, whose three-stage model of change emphasized the importance
of unfreezing the status quo, moving to a new equilibrium, and re-
freezing to lock-in the change. A key insight derived from Lewin’s
model is that identifying and eliminating barriers to change is often a
more effective way to change peoples’ behavior than applying increasing
pressure to change. Our suggestions are squarely in line with this view:
By changing spaces in two key ways, organizations can remove barriers
to intergroup contact that may change intergroup attitudes.
Casual Intergroup Encounters in Physical Space Organizations can
create the right conditions to make casual interactions with coworkers
of a different race more common. For example, consider a classic study,
which found that students randomly assigned to live with a roommate of
a different race during their first year of college had more positive
intergroup attitudes in their fourth year of study than those randomly
assigned to live with same-race roommates. This occurred because
sharing the same physical space on a daily basis provided students with
plenty of opportunities for casual intergroup encounters. This extends to
the workplace too; for example, a recent study at a medical research
symposium randomized opportunities for face-to-face encounters
among scientists, finding that pairs of scientists who met in this way
become more likely to collaborate together.
Just as organizational leaders have worked together to design Covid-safe
workspaces, we suggest that re-entry could also include redesigning
physical space for more casual intergroup encounters. For example,
because physical distance between offices makes it far less likely that
employees will interact with each other, organizations could instead
offer inclusive meeting spaces that are convenient, accessible, and
comfortable for all groups. In an organizational context, spaces that
function as architectural funnels (e.g., locating office bathrooms to
produce foot traffic through common areas as Steve Jobs did at Pixar) or
social magnets (e.g., Microsoft’s giant makerspace, The Garage) may
facilitate more casual encounters over shared needs and
interests. Creating opportunities for tailored encounters and
conversations with and through the local community by reimagining
public spaces and communal experiences with the help of organizations
such as The Project for Public Spaces and The People’s Supper,
respectively, could also help in this regard. More broadly, we suggest
that being thoughtful about where people work, who people interact
with, and how those interactions arise, should become a focus of DEI
work that could involve behavioral scientists, engineers, and architects.
Casual Intergroup Encounters in Digital Space Designing spaces
extends beyond the physical environment and into the digital sphere, as
made particularly relevant by the Covid-19 pandemic. Consequently, not
all employees or organizations may be able to implement changes to
their physical spaces that allow for increased casual intergroup contact.
And while remote working may be beneficial for many employees, one
possible side effect is reduced intergroup contact, given that workplaces
are often one of the few places that provide employees who live in
segregated neighborhoods with opportunities for casual intergroup
encounters.
Technological advances may offer novel ways for employees to interact
across group boundaries in digital spaces. One recent study at a large
global organization, for example, randomized synchronized and
informal virtual meetings between remote interns and senior managers.
Other studies have used free lunches as an incentive to randomly pair
employees across the organization who may otherwise not interact,
finding that these are helpful to bridge organizational hierarchies
particularly when lunches are scheduled by a “social bot” rather than
arranged by human actors.
Similarly, managers may find creative ways to use apps, including
Clubhouse (which could provide a space for people to have casual, drop-
in audio conversations with each other) and Gather (which could
provide a navigable virtual environment that helps coworkers feel
connected while working remotely) to promote more casual intergroup
encounters. Indeed, the digital world offers organizational leaders
nearly boundless possibilities, such as using virtual reality technology to
engineer casual intergroup contact experiences for employees in highly
immersive and realistic social environments, which could be used for
onboarding or training. There are even opportunities for organizational
leaders to pursue these goals beyond the boundaries of the organization.
For example, leaders may expose organizational members to other
cultures by arranging one-of-a-kind activities hosted by local experts as
part of a team building exercise or company retreat.
Achieving and managing diversity and inclusion is hard. Many
initiatives focus on changing hearts and minds to overcome resistance to
diversity and inclusion, but these initiatives have largely overlooked one
of psychology’s most powerful, time-tested tools — designing physical
and virtual interaction spaces. A path of less resistance may involve
thoughtful design choices.
From the HBR Store
Tool
Buy Now
Book
Buy Now
Read more on Race or related
topic Diversity
Eric M. Anicich is an Assistant Professor inthe Management and OrganizationDepartment at the University of SouthernCalifornia’s Marshall School of Business. Hisresearch focuses on the forms and functions ofsocial hierarchy within groups.
Jon M. Jachimowicz is an Assistant Professorof Business Administration in theOrganizational Behavior Unit at HarvardBusiness School. His research focuses on twotopics. First, he studies employees’ passion fortheir work, highlighting that passion is anattribute that varies over time. Second, hestudies economic inequality, exploring howdisparities in income are perceived, and howthey influence individual’s emotions andbehaviors. He particularly focuses on howthose at the bottom of the income distributioncan be supported to attain more favorablelong-term outcomes. He received a Ph.D. inManagement from Columbia Business School.
Merrick Osborne is a Ph.D. candidate in theDepartment of Management and Organizationat the Marshall School of Business.
L. Taylor Phillips is an Assistant Professor atNYU Stern School of Business. Her researchfocuses on engaging traditionally privilegedgroups in diversity and equity efforts, andincreasing cooperation between theadvantaged and disadvantaged.
Tweet
Post
Share
Save
Next InOperations
A Simple Way toIdentify PatientsWho Need TechSupport forTelemedicine
Summary. Often, strategies around making organizations more anti-racist focus on changing
hearts and minds. Sometimes this isn’t enough, however, and can result in backlash or
increased self-segregation among white employees. In these situations, leaders should... more
Tweet
Post
Share
Save
PerformanceMeasurement: HarvardManageMentor
Harvard BusinessEssentials: ManagingCreativity and Innovation:Practical Strategies to
Partner Center
FacebookTwitterLinkedInInstagramYour Newsreader
Diversity Latest Magazine Ascend Topics Podcasts Video Store The Big Idea Visual Library Case Selections
Race | Design Physical and Digital Spaces to Foster Inclusion Give a Gift
![Variable exponent sequence spaces revisited · [(e n) IN] = ‘q( ) \c 0 The inclusion X aˆX bis valid for any Banach Function Space X.In the case of Talponen type spaces, such result](https://img.pdfslide.net/doc/110x75/5f708ad515166c78173b8e99/variable-exponent-sequence-spaces-revisited-e-n-in-aq-c-0-the-inclusion.jpg)
