Driving Change: The Multicultural Organization Development Model

Nov 16

The type of model that your organization is using (or not using) is an important question to ask when thinking about developing multicultural competence (Williams, 2020). The Multicultural Organization Development (MCOD) generally refers to the process in which an organization’s member component grows from a single, or limited number of cultural backgrounds, to a multicultural background, turning into a diversified, inclusive, and complementary group (Jackson, 2006). Cultural diversity is becoming an increasingly significant measurement when employers, employees, and the public are evaluating a team. Building up a multicultural organization is a justified direction and a crucial task for teams and corporations. There have been extensive studies regarding the competitive advantage of multicultural teams against monocultural ones in various ways, from the ability of developmental innovation to projecting a positive public image (Jackson, 2006). In this blog, we focus on the MCOD as a way to help organizations focus their efforts to develop multiculturally competent individuals and organizations.

Jackson (2006) describes 6 stages of groups from monocultural to multicultural in MCOD:

The Exclusionary Organization: The organization openly devotes itself to maintaining the majority’s privilege and dominance. Example: Local white are prioritized to enter the executive group.
The Club: the organization stops explicitly buttressing the majority cultural group, but seeking to keep the privilege through core values, norms, policies, and procedures. Example: Wage discrimination, complicated approval process for minority group promotion.
The Compliance Organization: committed to eliminate some inherent discriminations, but in a gentle, compromising manner, not disturbing the major structure or creating controversy issues. Example:
The Affirming Organization: start to actively hiring or absorbing members that are typically not recognized. All employees are encouraged to think and behave in a non-oppressive manner.
The Redefining Organization: Intentionally hiring minority groups, begin to question the limitations of cultural reliance on one perspective. Actively engage in visioning, planning, and problem solving activities.
The Multicultural Organization: Reflects the contribution and interest of diverse cultural and social groups. Devote to erratic oppression in all forms within the organization.

How would you categorize your organization?

The supportive mechanism behind the MCOD is multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is embedded with a value system that is rooted on diverse backgrounds and pluralism. Cultural identities such as ethnicity, race, religion, gender, neurodiversity, abilities, and class are all components that are important to consider when thinking about identity and performance development. In the setting of a team, high multicultural competence can be enhanced by diversity of members. In businesses, it expands to the distribution of power, the diversified component among all levels of members, from staff to executive leaders.

Becoming an MCO can help organizations:

Encourage creativity, innovation, and complex problem solving. When the members challenge ideas and reflect in interdependent and diverse groups, they have a higher likelihood of solving novel problems.
Positive public image and higher loyalty. Multicultural businesses are more likely to attract high performance employees. Look at the business demographics over the last two decades (https://www.bls.gov/). Times are changing, this point is going to become more and more critical in the years to come.

A Multicultural Organization will strive to:

Value the contributions and interests of all employees.
Reflect diverse social and cultural groups throughout all levels of the organization (Pause for moment).
Commitment to eliminate all forms of oppression within the organization.
Incorporate members as participants in decisions that shape the organziation.
Follows through on broader social and environmental responsibilities.

Things that will impair MCOD：

Executive leaders choose not to act as the representative or make no commitments.
Lack of transparent decision-making process. A lack of trustworthiness can erode multicultural solidarity.

As the leader who holds the direction, consider your individual and organizational goals. What are you willing to do yourself? What topics do you need to learn more about? Do you know the issues? What are you measuring? Is multicultural measurement important and how do you begin (Greenway, 2020)

A leader needs to help a guiding coalition to move multicultural change within the organization. Consider the following components:

Systems that recruit and retain talented individuals.
A robust Internal Change Team that takes on the responsibility of managing the MCOD process. The team should be accountable to leadership,
- Accountable to leadership.
- Responsible. This work is focused and requires careful attention to detail to personnel, policies, and processes.
- Supportive to ALL members of the organization. Not just the people who agree with the changes.
- Trustworthy. They want what is best for the organization.
An external MCOD consultant team that is trustworthy, knows the model, and is committed to doing the work with integrity and pride.

Summary

The MCOD requires a systematic, long-term effort with appropriate guidelines. It reflects how a business evaluates openness, inclusion, and diversity. The MCOD not only enhances the well-being of employees and members in your team, but also brings substantial competitive advantages in the market. It needs patience, vision, and determination for a leader to direct their team to a real multicultural organization.

Haoyuan Shi is part of the 2022-2023 Legacy internship cohort. He is a double major in Clinical/Community Psychology and Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Cedric Williams is a Licensed Clinical and Consulting Psychologist. He is the CEO of Legacy Consulting & Research Group. His work and research interests are in the domains of Multicultural Competence, Resilience, Leadership, and Occupational Thriving. He has served as the Diversity and Inclusion Chairperson for the American Psychological Association’s Division 13, the Society of Consulting Psychology from 2020-2021. Dr. Williams provides executive coaching, consulting, and workshops for individuals, teams, and organizations. To inquire about consulting and coaching, fill out the service request form below

References:

Jackson, B. W. (2006). Theory and practice of multicultural organization development. The NTL handbook of organization development and change: Principles, practices, and perspectives, 139-154.

Fitzsimmons, S. R., Liao, Y., & Thomas, D. C. (2017). From crossing cultures to straddling them: An empirical examination of outcomes for multicultural employees. Journal of International Business Studies, 48(1), 63-89.

Greenway, T. (2021, July ). Four Steps to Evaluate Multicultural Competence in your Organization. Retrieved from https://legacycrg.com/blog/

Sue, D. W., Carter, R. T., Casas, J. M., Fouad, N. A., Ivey, A. E., Jensen, M., ... & Vazquez-Nutall, E. (1998). Multicultural counseling competencies: Individual and organizational development (Vol. 1). Sage Publications.

Williams, C. (2020, March 27). What is Multicultural Competence? Retrieved from https://legacycrg.com/blog/2020/blog2