2019 Annual Conference

Human Resource Development and Training

Shared Concurrent Session (Approx. 12 or 20 minutes)

Recent high profile reports of noose hangings and other forms of workplace bigotry have heightened awareness regarding the need for educational strategies that address organizational injustice. This session responds to this need by discussing how campus-based intergroup dialogue programs can be adapted for use in a range of organizational settings.

This session will benefit HRD practitioners, diversity officers, and other leaders interested in improving intergroup relations within their organizations. Additionally, individuals with backgrounds with campus-based diversity and inclusion efforts will benefit from discussion of how the expertise they have developed in higher educational settings can be applied across a range of institution types

Participants will be introduced to the overarching goal of intergroup dialogue (IGD) and strategies to effectual this goal. The main goal of IGD is to resolve gaps between people of diverse social identity backgrounds by building common ground between them (Zuniga et al., 2007). Participants will also explore how brining IGD to the workplace is one way to bring organizational stakeholders together to communicate across social identity group differences to find common ground. The three goals of IGD are conscious raising, finding common ground across differences, and promotion of social justice through individual practice.

This session will explore the applicability of intergroup dialogue (IGD) strategies developed in higher education to other organizational contexts. IGD can help members of organizations to explore their own and others' social identities, as well as their locations in systems of power and privilege (Gurin, Nagda & Zuniga, 2013). This can facilitate the bridging of gaps between different social identity groups that are in current conflict—or have been historically.

This presentation will cover a brief overview of what IGD is, it’s historical context, and how it has been used within and outside of higher education in order to help groups of different social identities, most notable race, work across their social identity-based issues.  After a presentation on the foundation of IGD, the presenters will then include a conversation on how IGD could be instrumental in the workplace in order to ease hostile social identity based climates.  Afterwards, the presenters will open up the presentation for questions from the attendees.