Chief Diversity Officers Organizational Legitimacy and Their

CHIEF DIVERSITY OFFICERS ORGANIZATIONAL LEGITIMACY AND THEIR

INCORPORATION INTO THE STRUCTURE OF PREDOMINANTLY WHITE

INSTITUTIONS

Megan J. Bottoms

Submitted to the faculty of the School of Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Education in the Department of Higher Education Administration, Indiana University December 2020

Accepted by the School of Education Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education.

Doctoral Committee

______Thomas F. Nelson Laird, Ph.D.

______Lucy LePeau, Ph.D.

______Sylvia Martinez, Ph.D.

Date of Defense December 3, 2020

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Acknowledgments

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; and in all ways acknowledge Him and he will make your path straight” Proverbs 3:5-7.

The dissertation is a long and arduous process. One needs to be self-motivated and disciplined to stay focused on the project and complete it to the end. Completing a doctorate can be a chaotic life event already, but more so if you are trying to balance working full-time, moving, switching jobs, and trying to start a family. There were many instances that I wanted to walk away, but thanks to the support structure in my life through family, friends, colleagues, and faculty – I persisted in completion. There is never a "right time" for anything, only the present time.

First, I want to thank my committee chair, Dr. Tom Nelson Laird, for his support,

direction, and feedback. Thom not only guided me through the process but helped calm down in

the frazzled months of 2020. Had it not been for Tom, I honestly believe I would not have

finished, so thank you. I want to thank my committee for their direction and guidance. Their

scholarly insight was invaluable in defining my research and developing me into a thoughtful

scholar. I also want to thank Dr. Lori Patton-Davis for her influence and guidance in the

beginning process. The dissertation refinement process was a tedious job to narrow down a

specific area of my interest, but that work set the trajectory for the rest of the project. I am

grateful that you were patient with me as we worked through all those drafts. Thank you as well

to the other HESA faculty, associate faculty, Kelley School faculty, and professors who shared

their knowledge and insight through class discussions and projects. Thank you to Dr. Don

Hossler, my program faculty advisor, who provided direction not just on courses but on

navigating the doctorate as well. During our first advising appointment, Don and I discussed how

life events like moving and switching jobs caused some folks to quit before they completed. I did not tell Don this, but I wanted to defy those odds, particularly as a woman. You can ask my mother, but I have always been stubborn and want to prove I can do something. Finally, thank you to Kathy Murphy. Kathy is the administrative assistant for the HESA program and the glue that held this whole thing together. Kathy helped me make sure I made all my deadlines with the

School of Education. She helped me submit all my necessary paperwork and get all my signatures. She helped schedule my defenses, and more importantly, she cheered me on every time I came into the office or turned in a form over email. I kept looking forward to the day that I could hand everything over to her and say “I finished”.

I want to thank the Kappa Delta Foundation for the generous scholarships. The mission of Kappa Delta is to build confidence and inspire action in women and girls of all ages. The impact of graduate scholarships goes beyond monetary support. That funding advances vital research but also opportunities for women to impact their profession, career, family, and communities. AOT. I also want to thank the Malloy Family Scholarship through Indiana

University for the funding to travel to expand my knowledge and understanding of my topic.

Thank you to my editors Dr. Brian Edwards and Dr. Sabrena O’Keefe, the Heartful

Editors, and Dr. Sara Kathleen Henry for their tireless dedication and attention to detail. It took me some time to swallow my pride and realize that I needed an editor. Sara and the team treated my dissertation like it was their own, and it is evident in the care and compassion they took guiding me along the process. An editor should not be someone solely to correct your mistakes but to guide you in telling your story. I also want to thank my aunt Sandy who initially started off helping me edit. I am grateful for her labor of love in that first year.

This doctorate journey is tough, and to walk it alone would be unbearable. To the many

classmates, colleagues, and professionals along the way who impacted my professional work,

research, supervision, passion, and learning, thank you for traveling this road with me. Your many conversations, discussions, exchanges of support, and encouragement inspired me to ask the tough questions and do the hard work. I am sorry I cannot name you all, but I would be remiss if I did not thank several folks.

First, to Dr. Robert Meyer, Dr. Bruce Jacobs, and Ms. Denise Gowin, thank you for allowing me to work for you and pursue my degree at Indiana University, and Thank you to Dr.

FeRita Carter in my current role at Riverside City College. These DREAM jobs impacted me in

more ways than you could have ever imagined. I am so honored that I was not only able to work

with you but also learn from you. Thank you all for encouraging and supporting my pursuit of

this degree while working for you. I also want to thank my colleagues Dr. Kourtney Gray aka

"work husband", Cassidy Sansone, Becca Holbrook, and Valerie Heruska for "picking up the

slack" when I was in class or working on assignments during meetings. I really could not have

done all this without your support and encouragement and for always asking me when I was

going to finish. I also want to give thanks to some of the most amazing graduate assistants

colleagues, and more importantly friends, Dr. Cameron Beatty and Melissa Abriani Banks. I was

so fortunate that you were my teammates and partners and that we could rely on each other.

Knowing that our programs, students, and committees were in your competent, knowledgeable,

and eager hands allowed me to engage and focus in the classroom. Cameron and Kourtney I look

forward to continue writing with you in the future.

I also want to thank several of my other friends and colleagues along this journey. Libby

Spotts, Leila Faranesh, Mattie White, Angela Rios, Dr. Deborah Hall, Dr. Greg Ferrer, and Dr.

Nicole Smith for always keeping me grounded and focused and for holding my feet to the fire to finish. Your friendship and support during the times I needed to vent process, needed encouragement, and a swift kick in the butt; thank you! All of you also helped me through those late nights of writing and tight deadlines. Cheers! To my cohort and mates Aaron Lower, Leah

Peck, JT Snipes, and Elijah Howe - thanks for helping me get through and for almost always wanting to be partners!

Finally, thank you to all my family and friends who encouraged me throughout this journey. I love you all! Mom, Ric, Victoria, Alexa, Megan, Carrie, Melissa, Jessica, Andrea, and

Bridget - thanks for always believing in me, for pushing me, and for having my back. We are all created for a purpose, discovering and living in that purpose is life's greatest journey.

vii

Megan J. Bottoms

CHIEF DIVERSITY OFFICERS ORGANIZATIONAL LEGITIMACY AND THEIR

INCORPORATION INTO THE STRUCTURE OF PREDOMINANTLY WHITE

INSTITUTIONS

Colleges and universities have often been seen as a social catalyst for diversity, equity, and inclusion. The shootings of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, and deaths of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor, gave rise to a national awakening of social justice. Colleges and universities have not been immune to the challenge of reconciling social and racial justice on their own campuses. Demands to address the diversity of student populations, lack of faculty and staff of color, and the absence of minority voices in the curriculum, among other things, have commanded colleges and universities to respond. One widespread response has been the incorporation of a Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) into the institutions organizational structure.

Banerji (2005) and Leon (2014) defined the CDO as an executive-level position of who addresses, guides, and advocates for diversity initiatives within the institution, constituent groups, and curriculum. These executive-level decision makers are intended to not only be a response to the outcry from unrepresented populations for more representation, but it is expected these positions will make real and lasting change on college and university campuses. Through a qualitative interview-based approach, I examined the organizational legitimacy of four CDOs at

viii

predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Legitimacy is defined as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (Suchman, 1995, p. 574).

Legitimacy guides the exchange of resources between an organization and their external environment. Those who hold the resources hold the power and dictate how those resources are allocated (Austin & Jones, 2016). Using resource dependence theory (RDT) and institutional theory (IT), I found that internal legitimacy was created when a CDO was embedded into the organizational structure; there was support from executive-level leadership and senior leadership team; the CDO had adequate human, financial, capital, and technical resources; and they had credibility with the university faculty. The internal legitimacy allowed the CDO to influence the diversity work on their campus. A CDO should be established as the champion for the diversity work, but when the diversity work is internalized and operationalized, that is what “moves the needle” on DEI.

______Thomas F. Nelson Laird, PhD

______Lucy LePeau, PhD

______Sylvia Martinez, PhD

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments ...... iv

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CDO ...... 8

Organizational Design and Legitimacy ...... 9

Problem Statement ...... 11

Study Significance ...... 13

Qualitative Interview-Based Study ...... 16

Use of Organizational Theory in the Research Design ...... 17

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ...... 19

Colleges and Universities as Organizations ...... 19

College and Universities’ Organizational Resources and Structure ...... 25

History of Diversity in Higher Education ...... 29

Using Organizational Resources to Increase Diversity ...... 34

Organizational Structure to Support Diversity ...... 40

Profile of CDO ...... 43

Theoretical Frameworks ...... 45

RDT ...... 48

IT ...... 50

Internal Legitimacy ...... 52

Resources and Legitimacy of CDO ...... 55

Resources –What We Know ...... 57

Priorities ...... 57

Power ...... 58

Influence ...... 61

Resources - What We Do Not Know ...... 61

Legitimacy – What We Know ...... 64

Integration Into Senior Administration ...... 65

Performative Action ...... 66

Legitimacy - What We Do Not Know...... 67

Conclusion ...... 68

CHAPTER 3: METHODS ...... 70

Research Question...... 70

Why Qualitative Inquiry? ...... 71

Methodological Approach ...... 73

Role of the Researcher ...... 74

Introduction to the Method ...... 76

Research Design...... 78

Interview Participants ...... 79

Data Collection ...... 81

Instrumentation ...... 81

Potential Problems ...... 83

Data Analysis ...... 84

Coding ...... 84

Themes ...... 85

Quality Concerns ...... 86

Ethical Considerations...... 87

Summary and Limitations ...... 88

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS ...... 90

Institutional Profiles ...... 91

Institution A ...... 91

CDO Role Creation ...... 93

Organizational Structure ...... 93

Campus Environment ...... 95

Resources ...... 96

Stakeholders ...... 98

Conclusion ...... 99

Institution B ...... 100

CDO Role Creation ...... 102

Organizational Structure ...... 103

Campus Environment ...... 103

Resources ...... 104

Stakeholders ...... 107

Conclusion ...... 108

Institution C ...... 110

CDO Role Creation ...... 110

Organizational Structure ...... 111

Campus Environment ...... 113

Resources ...... 114

Stakeholders ...... 115

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Conclusion ...... 116

Institution D ...... 118

CDO Role Creation ...... 119

Organizational Structure ...... 120

Campus Environment ...... 121

Stakeholders ...... 123

Resources ...... 124

Conclusion ...... 125

Interview Themes ...... 127

Themes ...... 127

Theme 1: Leadership ...... 128

Subtheme 1.1: Executive Leadership...... 129

Subtheme 1.2: Senior Leadership...... 132

Subtheme 1.3: Shepherding...... 134

Theme 2: Resources ...... 135

Subtheme 2.1: Funding ...... 136

Subtheme 2.2: Human Resources...... 138

Theme 3: Credibility...... 140

Theme 4: “The Diversity Work, Big D and Little d” ...... 144

Subtheme 4.1: Diversity “Work.” ...... 146

Subtheme 4.2: “Moving the Needle.” ...... 149

Conclusion ...... 150

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS ...... 154

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Discussion of the Results ...... 158

Internal Legitimacy ...... 158

Diversity Work ...... 163

Implications for Institutions ...... 164

Takeaway: Executive-Level Leadership ...... 166

Takeaway: Credibility ...... 167

Takeaway: Resources ...... 171

Takeaway: Diversity Work ...... 172

Implications for Future Research ...... 174

Conclusion ...... 177

Epilogue ...... 180

REFERENCES ...... 184

Appendix A...... 204

Appendix B ...... 207

Appendix C ...... 210

Resume

xiv 1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

In August 2014, colleges and universities became the frontlines of the cultural war in the

United States. After the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO at the beginning of

August, students of color coordinated protests and sit-ins drawing attention to the racism still

prevalent across the country. In the fall of 2015, Jonathan Butler drew specific attention to the

University of Missouri in Columbia, MO with his hunger strike aimed at university administration for their apparent lack of response to racial incidents on campus. Black students were being targeted with racial slurs, notes, and comments that went largely unacknowledged by the administration. In an interview with The Washington Post, Butler stated:

We have reactionary, negligent individuals on all levels at the university level on our

campus and at the university system level, and so their job descriptions explicitly say that

they’re supposed to provide a safe and inclusive environment for all students . . . but

when we have issues of sexual assault, when we have issues of racism, when we have

issues of homophobia, the campus climate continues to deteriorate because we don’t have

strong leadership, willing to actually make change. (Miller, 2015, para. 15)

The lack of attention from the administration to a swastika smeared on a bathroom stall in a residence hall was the last straw for Butler.

Butler subsequently began his hunger strike on November 2, 2015, stating that then university President Tim Wolfe was not addressing the racially charged and rapidly deteriorating

“hostile environment for Black students” (Miller, 2015, para. 9). According to the article in The

Washington Post, Butler commented, “I already feel like campus is an unlivable space, so it’s worth sacrificing something of this grave amount, because I’m already not wanted here. I’m already not treated like I’m a human” (Miller, 2015, para. 2). The message was directed at the

2 university administration, particularly President Tim Wolfe, calling for them to do their part to address the campus culture.

Since at least 2000, incidents of racism, racial slurs, and culturally insensitive messages emanating from colleges and universities have made the national news (Harper & Hurtado,

2007). Several prominent incidents—including Butler’s hunger strike—have garnered recent attention from the public. A scan through the articles published in The Journal of Blacks in

Higher Education, and one will see these racial incidents are only a few of many. Racial tensions are not normal deviations, but rather larger indicators of campus climate. Now, more than ever, students have started putting pressure onto the institution to address this behavior and change organizational culture.

Racial tensions have been intertwined with campuses since the time of the colonial colleges. In his book Ebony and Ivory, Wilder (2014) detailed the economic and social forces that initiated the slave trade and their connection to the colonial colleges. Education in the colonial colleges was a sign of prominence and importance because only those with financial means could take advantage of education. Education was a means and opportunity to extend social benefits, but it served exclusively the White, Christian men in the colonies. When opportunities to educate Blacks and women emerged, the newly minted democracy, social order, and the benefits of White, Christian male superiority in the newly established United States were threatened (Wilder, 2014). Hurtado (1992) explained, since the elimination of de jure segregation, racial tensions have increased on campuses, largely due to social and environmental forces. Tensions arose at colleges and universities across the country when institutional support and priorities for diversity did not align with the legal mandates of desegregation, coupled with the perceived threat of the dominant group losing power and resources (Hurtado, 1992).

In a more global world, with new generations of students, the old model of U.S. higher

education no longer fits. In her new book, Diversity’s Promise for Higher Education: Making It

Work, Smith (2020) articulated that higher education should no longer try and accommodate

diversity, rather, higher education must move ahead and build a landscape of global inclusion.

For colleges and universities this means diversity extends past just mission and vision

statements, but into core institutional mission and function. With massive global migration and

immigration changing the demographic and cultural dynamics here in the United States, higher

education needs to be the standard bearer for inclusion both demographically and curricular.

There are strategic opportunities to fulfill the mission of diversity within higher education that

meet societal and institutional needs, and it begins with interrupting the embedded patterns and practices of exclusivity (Smith, 2020). However, one dilemma facing this paradigm shift is articulating the definition of diversity.

Diversity has become somewhat of an umbrella term in the higher education literature.

Early literature and discussions of diversity, and the imperative for, focused on structural diversity and critical mass of underrepresented students on college and university campuses across the United States (Smith, 2020). Smith (2020) urged as conversations continue to happen on campuses it begins with not only defining what diversity means, but what identities get included into the overall conversation. Definitions often left to a task force or a single office to define, either a list of identities or of issues, and misses the complexity of diversity. For example, just classifying racial and ethnic identities into a set of checkable boxes, it misses a broader dynamic that cannot be captured in a list of static categories. Not only do we miss important information about our institutional populations, but we miss out on seeing patterns, demographic trends, and the opportunity for some identities to rise to the surface (Smith, 2020). We could also

miss seeing the entanglement and overlap with regards to poverty, race, gender, sexual orientation, geographic region, and immigration status. By coalescing these together institutions can identify structural inequity, oppressive practices, systems of power, and indicators of well-

being in this country.

Moving forward, to provide a uniform understanding, it is important to define diversity.

The diversity literature includes studies focused on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation,

class, and ability as well as their intersectionality and identity (Smith, 2012, 2020). The use of

the term diversity has historically related to underrepresented racial and gender populations, and

recently have incorporated additional marginalized populations to include religion and sexual

orientation. Smith (1995) progressively moved from defining diversity in terms of affirmative

action toward the inclusion of broader societal perspectives; and how the higher education

literature can integrate diversity into organizational theory and practice (Smith, 2009, 2015,

2020). However, Smith cautioned that diversity cannot be condensed into a checkable “laundry

list” of identities.

Though warned that focusing too much on the definition of diversity might turn attention

away from addressing real issues, Smith (1995) provided a four-dimensional framework for

understanding and defining diversity in higher education. Smith broke down the definition of

diversity into four different dimensions: (a) representation, (b) climate and response to

intolerance, (c) educational/scholarly mission, and (d) organizational and intellectual transformation. The dimension of representation has been typically used to define diversity. This dimension most commonly refers to people of color from “historically underrepresented groups,” and holds implications related to having campus populations that are not reflective of the societal demographic (Smith, 1995). The issues of retention, graduation, harassment, and isolation for

students, faculty, and staff are encompassed in the dimension of climate and response to

intolerance. This dimension focuses heavily on aspects of diversity that attend to issues of social

justice, representation, inclusion, intergroup relations, institutional practices, and climate (Smith,

1995). The third dimension in Smith’s definition of diversity is the educational/scholarly

mission. This dimension focuses on the intentional inclusion of ethnic and gender studies into the

institutional curriculum for all students (Smith, 1995). The final dimension in the definition of

diversity is transformation. This is the most complicated of the four dimensions, as it requires a

fundamental change to various institutional practices, traditions, and firmly held beliefs.

Transformation, in this definition of diversity, is a complete shift of institutional mindsets and

practices, where students/faculty/staff, curriculum, and learning are more inclusive and holistic

(Smith, 1995). Moving forward, use of the term diversity reflects Smith’s four dimensions of diversity.

Individuals learn by encountering difference both inside and outside of the classroom.

Through classrooms, residence halls, programs, and organizations, colleges and universities create a unique environment for students to experience the dynamic issues of diversity in society at a critical time in their development (Gurinet et al., 2002). Such diversification includes the

need to represent a diversity of thoughts, perspectives, and cultures in the curriculum

(Worthington et al., 2014). Over the last decade, colleges and university administrators have

agreed the need for more diverse campus environments has never been stronger—colleges and

universities can no longer dismiss diversity or the argument that diverse campuses impact globalization and influence an inclusive society (Banerji, 2005; Hale, 2004, Suarez et al., 2018).

Students benefit from engaging and learning with others who have differing life experiences,

views, and opinions, including the diversification of thought and perspectives, individual identity

development, and cultural understanding.

Over the last decade, technology, travel, and education have created a more integrated

and globalized world. In healthy democracies, there is a link between diversity and changing

demographics. This has made it imperative for individuals to be able to operate within a diverse

society, and for the nation’s workforce to be educated in the differences of others in relation to

their lives and work (Clark, 2011; Dancy, 2010a; Smith, 2015a). Individuals must be exposed to

an array of people, thoughts, ideas, and experiences that challenge their perspectives (Clark,

2011; Hale, 2004). This exposure to diversity aids in working with and understanding individuals

of different cultures and perspectives. It also brings awareness to social disparities and provides a

starting point to address inequities. Smith (2009) believed diversity is a powerful agent of change

and, like technology, has the power to shape and transform not just colleges and universities, but also the world by integrating diversity into everyday life. Higher education can be the linchpin in addressing inequities of a pluralistic society, diversity and democracy, and the opportunity for integration into all aspects of life.

According to U.S. census data in 2010, the number of individuals from diverse populations living in the United States has significantly increased over the last 30 years. We

expect to see an even greater diversification and multiracial society as we approach the end of

the 2020 census. At the same time, access to higher education in the United States has increased

for individuals outside of the traditional college and university population (i.e., age 18–24,

White, male, Christian, and of high socioeconomic status). Individuals from different genders, ages, social classes, races, ethnicities, and cultures now attend college to prepare themselves for life and the workforce (Lattuca & Stark, 2009). Increased access to education for diverse

populations also impacts the compositional and structural diversity of the nation’s workforce

(Williams et al., 2005). A compositionally diverse workforce increases the likelihood that

individuals will interact and engage with others who are different from them. The National

Association of Student Personnel and the American College Personnel Association (Keeling,

2004) put forth the expectation that colleges and universities will train and prepare students to be effective and engaged in society.

Diversity is not a demographic to be counted in a box or a percentage of students on an admissions brochure. Diversity in colleges and universities should be a strategic priority within the organizational makeup of the institution. Its more than recruiting and retaining students, faculty, and staff with diverse experiences, backgrounds, ideas, and philosophical points of view.

Infusing Smith’s (1995, 2015) definitions and frameworks of diversity and transformation into a college and university communities creates a dynamic educational and work environment that is inclusive and adapts to the changing cultural and societal dynamics, while fulfilling the teaching, service, learning, and research missions of colleges and universities.

Nationally, colleges and universities are under significant legal, social, and financial pressures to address the campus climate and increase the diversification of their campus environment and populations. Colleges and universities across the United States continue to receive external and internal pressure to answer the question: How important is diversity to you?

(Clark, 2011; Leon, 2014). The prevalence of racially motivated incidents on campus requires colleges and universities to respond rapidly to issues of diversity and cultural insensitivity with administrative action by actively creating an environment to prevent incidents (Parker, 2015).

Student activism, both physically on campuses and digitally on social media, has increased as incidents of racism and bigotry permeate the campus from the boarder society. Movements like

Black Lives Matter are happening all over the country and institutions should be prepared to at

the minimum engage in conversations about racism, system oppression, and social justice.

Student activism has been mainstay for exposing misalignments between institutional values and

messages about diversity and inclusion (Hoffman & Mitchell, 2016).

One approach colleges and universities use to address both racial incidents and the lack of faculty and staff of color includes modifying organizational infrastructure. Throughout the last

2 decades, numerous colleges and universities have created a staff position specifically focused on campus diversity initiatives (Banerji, 2005; Leon, 2014), such as the executive-level position of chief diversity officer (CDO). A campus CDO is an educational leader who addresses, guides, and advocates for diversity initiatives within the institution, constituent groups, and curriculum.

CDO

The very idea of a diversity-themed administrator emerged from response to the Civil

Rights movements. Academic and supportive programs were created for Blacks, and that usually meant hiring Black administrators to oversee the programs (Peterson & Associates, 1978, p.

215), and “changing legal contexts and campus unrest pressured early institutional response, just as they do today” (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013, p. 34). Many of those early positions were faculty and staff of color who were given other responsibilities and program oversight unrelated to the duties they were hired. In early establishment of a diversity administrator, very rarely was chief part of a leader’s official title but they were often doing the work, and as such labeled themselves as the CDO. Most often the administrator is mislabeled as the CDO, mostly giving the title to the highest-ranking diversity administrator, and their work is inconsistent with that of a chief (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). Today positions have transitioned and evolved, and

many lower level positions were eliminated in favor of higher ranking, strategically well-

positioned, and influential administrators, including the official role and title of CDO.

Experts estimate that 80% of the current CDO positions have been added or reorganized within the last 2 decades. Colleges and universities have added the specific position of CDO into their cabinet-level organizational structures (Worthington et al., 2020). The term CDO was defined by Williams and Wade-Golden (2013) as:

A boundary-spanning senior administrator that provides diversity-themed organizational

change as a shared priority at the highest levels of leadership and governance. Reporting

to the president, provost or both, the CDO is an institutions highest-ranking diversity

administrator. The CDO is an integrative role that coordinates, leads, enhances, and in

some instances supervises capabilities of the institution in an effort to create an

environment that is inclusive and excellent for all. (p. 31)

The role of the CDO is to monitor the diversity climate; to improve the recruitment and retention of underrepresented students, faculty, and staff; to council on curriculum and diversity issues and initiatives; and to provide input on equity plans (Banerji, 2005; Clark, 2011; Gose,

2006; Williams, 2007; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007). Within colleges and universities, CDOs provide the overall diversity strategy to pursue and work to ensure diversity is infused in every aspect of the institution.

Organizational Design and Legitimacy

Governance is how an organization seeks to manage its environment. When higher education institutions create governance structures (i.e., the organization’s formal structure and leadership), the institution is communicating its values, ideals, and expectations by signifying where it places its resources (Davis & Cobb, 2010; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Tolbert, 1985;

Tolbert & Zucker, 1983). Colleges and universities signal their value of diversity by modifying their organizational structures to include offices specifically focused on issues of diversity (Leon,

2014). These offices work to ensure equitable hiring practices; recruitment and retention of diverse students, faculty, and staff; and the creation of inclusive campus environments (Gose,

2013; Leon, 2014). Across the nation, colleges and universities are signaling to their external and internal environments that they value diversity through the intentional alignment of their organizational structure.

Many CDOs are executive-level decision makers within the institution who report on aspects of campus diversity and influence diversity planning and decision making (Leon, 2014).

Their work is to actively engage the campus in diversity efforts to create a more inclusive environment at every level of the instiution and every initative the colleges and undertakes

(Gardner, 2015; Harvey, 2014; Leon, 2014). Currently, many CDO positions are located at the senior administrative level and either report directly to the president, dean or provost, or a senior- level administrator (Banerji, 2005; Cherenfant & Crawley, 2012; Williams & Wade-Golden,

2013). These CDO appointments aim to ensure university leaders, executives, and policymakers include diversity in executive-level campus decision making (Barceló, 2007; Gose, 2013; Leon,

2014). A study mentioned by Williams and Wade-Golden (2013) found that 55% of CDOs believed their role was harder because they were not structured appropriately within their institution. When CDOs participate in the decision making of the organization, it influences campus diversity efforts. For the CDO position to be effective, it cannot simply have a title—it must also have legitimacy with the internal and external environments.

Diversity is a factor in an organization’s legitimacy. Legitimacy is defined as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or

appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions”

(Suchman, 1995, p. 574). According to Hannon & Freeman (1989), legitimacy in an organization

is a form of survival that the is new structure contributes something to their consumers.

Legitimacy serves as a form of social credibility for external entities exchanging resources with the organization that they share or support the same values as the organization. By incorporating the CDO position into organizational structures, colleges and universities signal to their internal

and external environments like students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents, donors, and the

community writ large that they value diversity (Clark, 2011; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013;

Wilson, 2013). Harvey (2014) further stated that the inclusion of a CDO raises the profile and publicity of institutional diversity initiatives. Therefore, by including a CDO in the organizational structure, colleges and universities may gain legitimacy with internal and external stakeholders who share the same value of diversity as they competed for organizational resources.

Problem Statement

The rapid emergence of CDOs among colleges and universities raises questions about how, if, and under what conditions these positions have influence. An academic search for empirical research on CDOs and how they have accomplished their diversity work produced limited emergent work published in scholarly journals. According to anecdotal evidence, CDOs rely on building relationships to fulfill their responsibilities (Harvey, 2014). Research is emerging examining the professionalization, content, knowledge, and understanding of the CDO experience, and some literature exists on the CDO’s influence on campus climate, but there is still limited research on organizational culture or organizational legitimacy within colleges and universities (Woodward, 2014). There does exist literature exploring the identity development of

underrepresented individuals within organizations and emerging literature on the individual’s

characteristics who assume these roles. Bastedo (2012) stated that scholars had previously

focused on management and the experiences of underrepresented individuals within groups,

teams, faculty, and staff within the higher education workforce. By understanding and addressing

the gap in the administrative literature, college and universities can better structure their CDO

administrator to answer to the organizational environment. One way to address the gap in higher education administration and management literature is to identify the direct and indirect influence of CDO on the internal environment of college and universities.

Additionally, a diverse college or university is influenced by the internal human

environment of the faculty, staff, and students. In organizational behavior, legitimacy has

focused extensively on the influence of the organization’s external environment. Internal

environmental legitimacy focuses on the internal membership of the organization, particularly

constituent groups and internal influences. Literature on internal legitimacy and its influence on

higher education institutions is absent to date (Kezar et al., 2020). Currently, the research on

internal environments has occurred largely within the field of organizational sciences and

organizational ecologists, and the higher education literature has not addressed the internal

environment in relation to organizational influence and legitimacy (Bastedo, 2012). Smith (1995)

discsussed the importance of internal constituents, faculty, staff, and students, in creating a

diverse college or university community. Rabl et al. (2020) demonstrated the lack of integration

of diversity management into the organizational literature and the importance of the internal

environment. This study provides a starting point for a new body of literature on legitimacy from

the internal environment of organizations and expands the literature in the fields of

organizational behavior and higher education.

With this study, I contribute to the organizational behavior literature by departing from the traditional quantitative methods used to adopt a qualitative methodology. In an analysis of organizational behavior literature, Morrison (2010) identified the need for more qualitative research. Heath and Sitkin (2001) asserted that research should connect empirical work with applicable methods. Therefore, I sought to expand the organizational behavior, higher education, and diversity literatures by examining how CDOs, within the particular context of predominantly

White colleges and universities, attain internal legitimacy.

Study Significance

In response to the growing number of racial incidents in our society and on college and university campuses as well as the societal mandate to educate a diverse society, I aimed to advance the understanding on how colleges and universities address these two issues. These issues are underscored by the need for more diverse faculty and staff on college and university campuses. I examined the efficacy of incorporating a CDO into the organizational structure shaped institutional transformation of diversity initiatives. This is important as without scholarly insight and research on effective implementation, CDOs lack support for intentional and impactful action. Currently, there is a limited body of empirical scholarship on the organizational development and structure of CDO positions. By understanding how CDOs operate within their institutions organizational structure to create legitimacy from the internal environment, I provide valuable contributions to the higher education administrative field and practice.

Modifications to organizational structure are essential to moving colleges and universities forward as society changes. Understanding how to use organizational structures to respond to societal influences will allow leaders to make more informed administrative decisions regarding campus initiatives (Bastedo, 2012; Kezar et al., 2020). A limited number of higher education

14 scholars have focused on the intersection of organizational behavior and the college and university environment (Bess, 1984; Kezar et al., 2020). Austin and Jones (2016) highlighted that understanding an institution’s governance structure has often been overlooked and underappreciated work. Previous studies have focused predominantly on governance models of colleges and universities and not on the elements of organizational structures and resource dependency (Bastedo, 2012; Gumport, 2012; Kezar et al., 2020; Manning, 2013). The survival of higher education institutions requires the acquisition and use of resources external to the institution, and it is vital for colleges and universities acquire and use resources from their external environment, and organizational structures need to be designed with the ability to maximize those resources (Birnbaum, 1988; Kezar et al., 2020; Williams et al., 2005). This understanding is impossible without studies focused on structure. Aside from providing empirical research to enhance the understanding of organizational structure within higher education, I provide insight into how one specific role within the organizational structure operates.

Integrating concepts, like external and internal legitimacy and college and university structure, from different fields will expand both the higher education and organizational behavior fields (Bastedo, 2012; Gumport, 2012; Manning, 2013). Cross-pollinating literature from separate fields aids in increasing the understanding and application of ideas and concepts in new situations and scenarios (Ropers-Huilman & Enke, 2010). This integration is accomplished through the incorporation of new theoretical frameworks and methods. Incorporating concepts from organizational science will expand how colleges and universities operate and manage their resources moving forward. Equally, it contributes to the fields of organizational science by providing a new context of application. Jarzabkowski et al. (2010) also stressed that there has

15 been a dissociation between theory and practice, particularly within academic management.

Practitioners in the contributing fields may then use the information in a new capacity (Manning,

2013; Ropers-Huilman & Enke, 2010). By applying a theory to a context outside of its orignating field of study, it will increase the realm of scholars research and provide innovative practical appliation; thereby expanding the scope of the research and information, both inside and outside of the academy.

This research also contributes to the expansion of institutional theory (IT). According to

Scott (2014), IT focuses on an external environment granting an organization legitimacy based on a set of socially constructed values and norms. These norms and values are based on pressures from legal or regulatory sources, normative or social sources, and/or mimetic or isomorphic sources (Daft, 2010; Scott, 2014). However, more resarch on the influence of the internal environment will lead to a greater understanding of how employees within an organization confer credibilty to senior leadershipt teams (Aime et al., 2010; Kezar et al, 2020; Rabl et al.,

2020). I examined how the internal environment influences and pressures the CDO to achieve internal legitimacy. This concept of constituent pressure on internal legitimacy would expand the current application of IT.

Study Design

There is a need to explore the incorporation of CDOs into a college or university’s structure and their internal legitimacy to influence diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Within such incorporation, the question further arises as to how a CDO accomplishes diversity work. Fundamental to this question is understanding the internal environment of colleges and universities and how they grant legitimacy to the CDO position within the organizational structure. By examining how the CDO obtains legitimacy within the institution, it aids college

and university leaders to develop and better support the CDO position. Through this research, I

explored the following research question: how does the CDO obtain internal legitimacy at a

predominantly White institution (PWI)? To maintain clarity, I focused on the formal hierarchal

position of CDO and the office that coordinates the diversity efforts of the campus under the

umbrella term of CDO.

Qualitative Interview-Based Study

Given the particulars of the research question above, I studied this topic using a

qualitative methodology. Qualitative methodology provides an entry into the discovery and understanding of an experience or phenomenon quantitative methods cannot capture, particularly the inherent human and personal aspects of a program or intervention (Baxter & Jack, 2008;

Creswell, 2014). Qualitative case study methods allow the researcher to study a defined case, build that case through the literature review, and present the story through the data analysis (Yin,

2012). Within organizational science, qualitative methods allow for organizational phenomena to be explained by the individuals who shape and influence the organization.

To investigate the research question above, I used a qualitative interview-based method.

The qualitative interview allows the researcher to gather unique information or interpretation

about a particular phenomenon from a specific individual or set of individuals that the researcher

themselves were not able to observe (Stake, 2010). This interview approach was used to

understand the internal organizational legitimacy of the CDO role through the lenses of RDT and

IT because it allowed the individual in the role to describe the structure, function, and processes of the unit (Weiss, 1995). While the sample size limits the ability to generalize findings, this qualitative-interview based study explores the CDO phenomena from different perspectives to garner a better understanding of the role. Using a qualitative interview-based approach, I

examined four CDO positions to provide a generalized composite of the position and CDOs’

diversity work. This allowed me to create a more robust and pragmatic portrayal of the CDO and

the internal environment on PWI campuses than I would be able to if examining a single

institution alone.

Use of Organizational Theory in the Research Design

Selecting the most appropriate theoretical concept to guide the research was a critical

strategy in designing a successful study, as it guided and positioned the study to best address the

research question (Yin, 2012). It was also critical to select an appropriate theoretical framework

to advance the literature of the topic (Yin, 2012). To examine the understanding and applicability

of this topic, I used the theoretical elements of resource dependence theory (RDT) and

institutional theory (IT).

RDT was used to explain how organizations obtain and manage the resources they need

to carry out the activities of their organizations and reduce dependency on the external

environment for those resources (Daft, 2010; Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003). IT clarifies how

organizations achieve acceptance and credibility from their external environment through

legitimacy (Daft, 2010; Scott, 2014). IT asserts that organizations are deemed legitimate when

the norms and values of the organization align with the external environment. Tolbert (1985)

argued that both RDT and IT are needed to provide a full explanation of why colleges and

universities adjust their organizational structures to secure and retain necessary resources from

both inside and outside the organization. In this study, I explored how colleges and universities

communicate a value of diversity to secure and maintain resources by incorporating a CDO into

their organizational structure.

Colleges and universities use mission and diversity statements to convey to the broader society the value and importance of diversity (Dancy, 2010b). However, writing diversity into a statement does not necessarily translate to action. Colleges and universities need to have decisive

organizational leadership and actions that focuses on increasing campus diversity. In addition to

the claim that colleges and universities value diversity, they must be actively engaged in creating

an environment of diversity. It is one thing to craft a progressive and inclusive vision and values

statement but without committed action from senior leadership, its worthless. Colleges and

universities, through their senior leadership, need to demonstrate their commitment to diversity

to not only diversifying their student, faculty, and staff, but institutionalized practices as well.

(Ahmed, 2012; Clark, 2011; Leon, 2014). This means colleges and universities must engage in

organizational behaviors that support underrepresented faculty, staff, and students so they can

feel safe and thrive on campus.

In the next chapter, I explain how colleges and universities operate and organize their

campuses to impact diversity. In doing so, I draw from concepts of organizational science within

the higher education context. I explain aspects of organizational structure, provide examples

from the organizational perspective, and illustrate the concepts using the CDO position. I further

discuss how internal campus constituents, such as faculty and staff, view the presence of a CDO

in a college and university organizational structure. Finally, I used theories from organizational

science to establish a foundation for creating the CDO position within college and university

organizational structures, and explain how I advanced the understanding of resource dependency

and legitimacy on the role of the CDO.

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

In this chapter, I provide a rationale for understanding colleges and universities as conventional organizations in relation to their structure and the acquisition of resources which led to the creation of chief diversity officer (CDO) positions. I then discuss how viewing diversity as a vital resource for colleges and universities is influential to the integration of the

CDO at the decision-making level of the organization. Finally, I review various theoretical perspectives that provided the basis for the study.

Colleges and Universities as Organizations

Colleges and universities comprise one of the largest industries in the United States and one of the most important institutions in our society. In the United States, higher education has not historically operated or been managed like a traditional business industry (Bastedo, 2012).

Given their breadth and depth, colleges and universities are also not simple organizations and, therefore, require tremendous expertise and specialization to understand their dynamics (Austin

& Jones, 2016). These college and university organizations employ hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of faculty, staff, and students ranging from highly specialized experts to entry level work study.

Until the late 20th century, governance in higher education had been relatively sheltered and untouched. Then amid scandals at public universities and tightening government budgets, the higher education system (macrolevel) and the individual organization (microlevel) governance was scrutinized (Austin & Jones, 2016; Manning, 2017). Austin and Jones (2016) described how this turmoil shed light on not only on the cumbersome and inefficiency of higher education governance, but also their inability to change with the dynamic and rapidly shifting external environment that higher education sought to serve. Higher education governance was left open to

stakeholders and critics who called for greater accountability, direct stakeholder investment, and

quality assurance mechanisms like professional management of operations. As a result, higher

education governance both macro and micro were restructured to better accommodate the

shifting complexities, but that also left understanding of governance structures open to greater confusion and interpretation. As enduring organizations, the institution of higher education has to reconcile with understanding its governance structures if it is going to have effective

administration.

Many who enter the field of higher education learn leadership and administration of

colleges and universities through their direct operations. For an administrator to guide colleges

and universities, they must learn about and understand how colleges and universities are operated

and managed (Birnbaum, 1988). Administration begins with viewing colleges and universities as

organizations and understanding their operations.

Organizations permeate every aspect of society from religion to government, business to

education. Because they are so vital to society, organizations need to be studied and evaluated

(Scott, 2014). Hall and Tolbert (2005) defined the organization as

a collectivity with a relatively identifiable boundary, a normative order (rules), rules of

authority (hierarchy), communication systems, and membership coordinating systems

(procedures); this collectivity exists on a relatively continuous basis in environments and

engages in activities that are usually related to a set of goals. These activities have

outcomes for organizational members, for the organization itself, and for society. (p. 4;

emphasis added)

Simply put, organizations are social entities with activities related to a set of goals that are coordinated in a deliberate manner linked to an external and internal environment (Daft, 2010;

Hall & Tolbert, 2005).

The study of organizations emerged from work occurring on college and university campuses. For example, well-used organizational theories like resource dependence theory

(RDT), institutional theory (IT), and garbage can theory stemmed from research conducted on campuses (Bastedo, 2012). Colleges and universities provide a broad understanding of organizations that allows researchers to translate their empirical work to a broad range of organizations and generalizable theories (Bastedo, 2012). Since Birnbaum’s (1991) research, there has been extensive work conducted on organizational concepts and theories related to colleges and universities (Austin & Jones, 2016; Gumport, 2012; Manning, 2013). However, there is still more work that needs to be conducted at colleges and universities, particularly with theoretical frameworks of organizational structure (Austin & Jones, 2016; Bastedo, 2012;

Gumport, 2012).

To begin to understand colleges and universities as organizations, one must understand the fundamental dimensions of higher education organizations. In their book on governance in higher education, Austin and Jones (2016) examined that while each campus may have a different set of formal of operations, the enduring qualities, historical linkages, and long-standing traditions of higher education institutions allow them to be deciphered from other organizations such as “hospitals” and “banks.” All organizations—whether corporate, governmental, or educational—share the same enduring dimensions: a structural dimension, a contextual dimension, a performance dimension, and a social dimension (Daft, 2010; see Table 1).

Table 1

Structural and Contextual Dimensions of Organizations

Structural Dimension Contextual Dimension Formalization – written documents, job Size – number of employees descriptions, job activities, policies, and standard operating procedures Specialization – variance of job operations, Strategy – formal goals, strategies, mission division of labor, degree of specialization statements, vision statements includes different departments and specialties

Professionalism – level of formal education Culture – unwritten procedures, values, and training required for a position beliefs, norms, ceremonies, traditions Hierarchy – chain of command, reporting Technology – how the raw materials (input) lines, communication paths, formal positions are within an organization that dictate span of control Centralization – decision-making power Note. Adapted from Daft (2010); Hall and Tolbert (2005); Thompson (2003).

The structural dimension of an organization characterizes how an organization physically arranges and regulates itself. This coordination is different for every organization and is accomplished by the organization determining its formalization, specialization, professionalism, hierarchy, and centralization (Daft, 2010; Hall & Tolbert, 2005). The contextual dimension of an organization underlies the structural dimension and impacts how the organization operates (Daft,

2010; Hall & Tolbert, 2005). The contextual dimension of the organization includes size, technology, environment, goals and strategies, and organizational culture (Daft, 2010; Hall &

Tolbert, 2005). The performance dimension is how effective and efficient an organization is at achieving its stated goals and objectives, while the social dimension focuses on the people within the organization and their interactions within the organization (Daft, 2010; Hall & Tolbert,

2005). All four components are interdependent; however, the structural and contextual dimensions combined are considered an organization’s structure (Bess et al., 2012; Daft, 2010).

Higher education is a complex enterprise of many colleges and universities; though most have very similar structural dimensions. Colleges and universities are often categorized as being highly specialized and are largely populated by distinctively educated and skilled professionals

(Vroom, 1984). Members have a specific knowledge unique to a small segment of the organization; this includes faculty teaching in a specialized area and staff in structured units like the registrar, admissions, and academic advising. In a less specialized organization, like a factory or retail operation, any member could complete the activities associated within a given position

(Birnbaum, 1988; Cherenfant & Crawley, 2012; Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967; Williams & Wade-

Golden, 2013). Many colleges and universities operate under a fractured system existing in parallel. Within most college and university organizations, there is a level of differentiation and coordination between academic units, student affairs, and university administration (Bess et al.,

2012). Birnbaum (1998) identified this dualism as the conventional administrative hierarchy and the faculty governance structure.

The administrative authority is somewhat centralized in a hierarchy to control and coordinates organizational elements like budgets, policies, and procedures, while the professional authority is specialized and individual including curriculum, faculty appointments, and tenure (Birnbaum, 1988; Hardy et al., 1984; Manning, 2017). This level of differentiation and coordination, especially in larger or complex organizations, can increase the level of decentralization within the organization, often characterized by the more complex jobs at the top of the organization (Birnbaum, 1988; Manning, 2017). The activities of the colleges and universities are most often coordinated through formal policies and procedures for student and faculty conduct, typically in the form of contracts and codes of conduct. Large state universities tend to have a higher degree of formalization because of the sheer size of the institution and the

assortment of services it provides (Austin & Jones, 2016; Daft, 2010; Hall & Tolbert, 2005).

There is some variety and complexity of colleges and universities within the U.S. higher education institution field (Austin & Jones, 2016; Peterson, 1985). Where colleges and

universities differentiate from each other is through the other aspects of the contextual dimension like size, culture, goals, strategies, norms, and ceremonies. These variations are what make each college and university campus unique while allowing comparable task activity across the higher

education industry.

Graduating students is the primary task activity of higher education. Colleges and

universities exist as organizations to matriculate students through the academic system and exit

them as graduates (Daft, 2010; Neumann, 2012; Thompson, 2003; Zucker, 1987). Most colleges

and universities are coordinated similarly to use their technology to turn inputs into outputs. This

means all college and university organizations use their faculty (technical core) to provide the

content education that students receive (technology) to turn the admitted student (input) into a

graduate (output; Birnbaum, 1988; Hardy et al., 1984; Thompson, 2003; Zucker, 1987). Colleges

and universities attempt to balance the tasks of their organizations (i.e., educating students)

where the method of student learning (i.e., throughput) also includes feedback from the student

(i.e., product; Daft, 2010; Thompson, 2003; Zucker, 1987). Thompson (2003) and Zucker (1987) asserted that an organization should construct itself to operate rationally under the influence of uncertainty while protecting its technical core. An effective college or university deliberately protects its technical core (i.e., faculty) and core ideals (i.e., educating students) from uncertainty inside and outside its organization. This protection occurs through the intentional provision and protection of strategic resources, enabled by the complexity of the structural and contextual dimensions unique to each organization to monitor and acquire those resources (Birnbaum, 1988;

Daft, 2010; Williams et al., 2005). Therefore, colleges and universities need a mechanism to monitor their resources within their internal and external environments to protect their core existence.

College and Universities’ Organizational Resources and Structure

Administrative positions in colleges and universities that now seem commonplace (e.g., provost, dean, vice president) emerged and evolved over several centuries to meet the needs and changing landscape of higher education. These positions were added to colleges and universities organizational structures to acquire or maintain organizational resources (Gumport, 2012;

Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). Colleges and universities need resources to sustain their strategies and accomplish their core premise of graduating students. However, colleges and universities are open systems and cannot produce their own resources, so they are in constant need of resources—human, financial, and physical capital—from their external environment

(Birnbaum, 1988). Such resources include students, faculty, donations, endowments, physical property, accreditation, and prestige. These resources both in and out of the organization ensure the organization’s existence (Katz & Kahn, 1966; Manning, 2017; Neumann, 2012; Williams,

2013; Williams et al., 2005). Organizational structure is a mechanism to monitor, acquire, and maintain such resources and to manage the use of the resources in turning students into graduates.

Most colleges and universities are structured similarly and create conscious plans for their administrations. In organizational studies, this development of organizational structure is referred to as administrative design or bureaucratic creation (Gumport, 2012; Manning, 2017;

Simon, 1997). Administrative design allows the organization’s structure to be responsive to the interactions and resources in the external and internal environments, without focusing on the

26 demands of the technical core. Administrative design allows organizations to maximize resources and to generate products that can be used to convert or acquire future resources (i.e., future students, donors, or jobs for graduates; Katz & Kahn, 1966; Neumann, 2012; Williams et al., 2005). The administrative design (i.e., bureaucracy) allows the organization to remain relatively stable while faculty, staff, and students filter in and out (Manning, 2017). The most successful organizations are those that are designed to respond to the changes in their external and/or internal environments to protect their resources. Such organizational designs allow individual colleges and universities to address resource acquisition and allocation and manage an uncertain external environment to achieve their organizational goals (Austin & Jones, 2016;

Gumport, 2012; Kuh, 2003, Manning, 2017). Organizations strategically design and align their formal structures to acquire the resources needed and to address the challenges and realities of pressures from the external environment (Birnbaum, 1988; Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967; Williams

& Wade-Golden, 2013).

Colleges and universities specifically design their organizational structures to use unique dimensions of their organizations to address their specific organizational resources. Over time, colleges and universities have learned to modify and adjust their organizational structures, sometimes very rapidly, to acquire and protect essential educational and organizational resources

(Birnbaum, 1988; Williams et al., 2005). For example, several decades ago, technology was not a central element in the educational process. Over the years, technology has progressed and permeated every aspect of society, and including higher education, and colleges and universities have adapted their institutional infrastructures to accommodate these shifts, making technology an integral part of administration, teaching, and research (Smith, 2012). Because of these critical shifts in technology, colleges and universities now have chief information officers or information

administrators who are responsible for the oversight, integration, management, and capacity

building of technology on campus. Now, on college and university campus across the country,

technology is an integrated and essential aspect of every administrative plan.

Administrative plans are used to communicate organizational priorities through policy, leadership, and formal structure. Organizational charts and diagrams are the most commonly used practice for communicating this administrative plan. These charts and diagrams articulate the organization’s hierarchy and centralization or formal organizational structure (Bess et al.,

2012; Daft, 2010). Most organizations operate within a hierarchy that dictates the span of control and authority formal positions hold, as well as the decision-making chain of the formal position.

Colleges and universities have some form of hierarchy, and power is reflected through that hierarchy in how many individuals report directly to the president (Birnbaum, 1988; Cherenfant

& Crawley, 2012; Daft, 2010; Hall & Tolbert, 2005). The organization’s decision-making power is reflected in its centralization. In more centralized organizations, like the political and bureaucratic models, decision-making power is concentrated at the top of the hierarchy; in more decentralized organizations, like collegial and anarchical models, the decision-making power is disseminated throughout the hierarchy. Decentralized decision-making creates predominantly loosely coupled systems and makes coordinated efforts within the organization more difficult

(Birnbaum, 1988; Cherenfant & Crawley, 2012; Daft, 2010; Hall & Tolbert, 2005; Manning,

2017). The organizational structure of a college or university impacts the service delivery of educating students and directly influences the work of turning students to graduates.

The role of college and university administration was developed to serve as a mediator and manager between the external, societal environment and the internal, university environment

(Kerr, 1963). University administration must now be able to interpret and integrate federal and

state regulations and legal precedents, and to specialize in areas of student need (Birnbaum,

1988; Kuh et al., 2011). In most colleges and universities, there is a specialized level of

administration directly responsible for responding to and reducing uncertainty related to the

acquisition and use of resources (Hardy et al., 1984). Manning (2017) highlighted that in

bureaucratic systems that span of control and the stability of personnel allow an organization can

also to increase the specialization of certain personnel so that leadership can focus on wider organizational oversight.

Colleges and universities exist as organizations to train a developing and diverse workforce in specialized and professional areas (Pusser & Marginson, 2012). Colleges and universities need to obtain and use human, financial, and capital resources to survive as an organization and to provide their task activity. One of the most important resources a colleges and universities can acquire and use is human resources. Human resources provide an organization a competitive advantage over other similar organizations in part because of the rarity of human resources. Colleges and universities need human talent to manage and operate the organization successfully (Richard, 2000). Faculty, staff, and students at each college or university provide a competitive advantage because they are harder to duplicate, there are limited substitutes, and they are able to pursue opportunities, whereas technological or physical resources are easily emulated (Richard, 2000). Human talent is necessary to manage and operate the organization successfully, and the cultural diversity of human talent adds value and contributes to the organization’s resources and competitive advantage.

Diversity of human resources has become an institutional and educational resource to command and a strategic priority for colleges and universities (Clark, 2011; Williams, 2013;

Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007). Colleges and universities must have diversity in their students,

faculty, staff, and administration. Having diversity and cultural differences among the human

resources, like faculty, staff, and students, increases organizational performance and outcomes,

provides better strategy and alternative options, and increases exposure of individuals to

difference (Cox, 1994; Chemers et al., 1995; Richard, 2000; Williams, 2013). Diversity in

human resources is valuable because it is harder for competition to imitate the diverse

composition and interactions that occur among individuals. As Richard (2000) stated, “diversity

is not cost to be managed but an asset to be fostered” (p. 166)—having diverse representation of

individuals within the organization can better address environmental changes and provides

strategy and organizational flexibility. Diversity among human resources is thus critical for

colleges and universities.

History of Diversity in Higher Education

Education has always been a regarded as a source of power and prominence. The adage

“knowledge is power” was quite literally the paradigm at founding of the colonial colleges. Not

everyone was entitled or given access to education and throughout history; nothing has

permeated higher education more than the issues of access. Issues of access have ranged in

physical access to space, opportunity for equal education, and financial access. Since the

inception of Harvard in 1636, U.S. higher education has been driven by the question “who has access to education?” In the colonial era, education was a means to train young, White men for the clergy and civic leadership. Access to this formal education, or college, was then limited to those who had the financial means, the opportunity to leave family responsibilities, and could demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of Hebrew and Latin (Lucas, 1994; Rudolph,

1977; Thelin, 2004). As new colleges emerged and expanded across the colonies, the access to education for women and Blacks did not, in fact they were openly rejected as not being educated.

At the end of the Revolutionary War, those who had a formal education from the colonial

colleges began to move west, and with them they took the idea of college education into new

communities. By 1861, this migration had led to the creation of approximately 250 more college

as far as the Mississippi River. Like the nine colonial predecessors, these new colleges were

established for the education of young, White, elite men in the community. However, unlike the

colonial colleges, these new colleges lacked the prestige and, therefore, had lower admissions standards. Lower admissions standards and lack of prestige, opened access to education for a new segment of the population with less power and privilege, but still limited access for women and Blacks (Lucas, 1994; Rudolph, 1977; Thelin, 2004).

Not to be denied access to formal education and training, women and Blacks began to coordinate and establish their own colleges. For women, access to formal education was not just about the physical access to the building and classes, but the equivalent opportunity to learn and be educated like their male counterparts (Solomon, 1995). In 1836, Mount Holyoke female seminary was established to begin providing formal training for women. Like the colonial colleges, these seminaries provided a training ground for females to carry out very specific roles in society. Women were being educated in Christian principles to carry out the duties of being a wife and mother (Solomon, 1995). The push for access to education did not just end with the establishment of women’s seminaries, there was a push for women to have access to the male dominated colleges as well.

Like women, Black students desired access to formal education. Similar to the challenge women faced, opening access to formal education challenged the White, male dominated status quo. Black education would certainly challenge the White social order. Blacks in the community began to organize their own institutions and in 1842 Cheyney State College (formerly the

Institute for Colored Youth) was established. The role of these colleges was similar to that of the

male-dominated, White colleges, which was to provide a Christian education for religious and

civic leadership in their community. By 1880, there were approximately 200 public, private, and

denominational colleges that provided educational access for Black students (Lucas, 1994). Then

in 1862 came charter of higher education’s revolution—the Morrill Land-Grant Act.

Prior to 1862, colleges were largely reserved for the U.S. aristocracy and a graduate of

one of these prestigious schools garnered even more status. Through the Morrill Act, states across the country were allotted a percentage of the 174,300,000 acres of public land to be used

for public universities (McDowell, 2003). The land-grant universities opened up access to education to a broader swath of working-class society and became known as the “people’s

universities” as they welcomed students in from farm, bakeries, factories, and machinery

(McDowell, 2003, p. 34). Not only did the land-grant colleges welcome new students into higher

education, they also brought with a new scholarship that diversified the prevailing norm of

education. Through their kitchens, barns, and farms came advancements in science, agriculture,

mechanics, technology, and economics.

While the land-grant colleges opened doors for those who were outside of the societal

elite, there was still limited access for Blacks. This new system of colleges did not open the

doors to a racially separated population of the United States—the newly freed Black slaves.

However, in 1890, Congress used a second Morrill Act to establish a system of colleges for

historically Black land grant universities (HBLGU). The HBLGUs provided an opportunity for

Black students to be educated that was not otherwise afforded them at the other land-grant

universities. Accordingly, there was a law that mandated any college or university receiving

federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, since many places still withheld

32 admissions from Black students; but if there was an institution that served Black students within the state the law was sufficed (Allen & Esters, 2018; Martin 2001). While HBLGU’s did provide access to Black students, funding was determined by each state, which meant they were significantly underfunded compared to their White counter-parts and HBLGUs did not receive the same land acquisition that was given in the first Morrill Act (Allen & Esters, 2018). Refusal and resistance to admitting Black and African American students into historically White

Institutions (HWI) would remain for over 100 years and significantly impact the diversification of U.S. colleges and universities.

At the turn of the century, the U.S. education system had approximately 500 institutions of varying denominations and affiliations serving different populations of people. All total U.S. institutions enrolled approximately 238,000 students. But, the early 1900s brought with it a new population of student who wanted access to U.S. higher education, Jews and immigrants. World

War I had infused the United States with immigrants and Jews coming to the United States for a new and better life. This included the opportunity to be educated in U.S. colleges and universities. Like women and Blacks, this new population of students challenged the White, male, Christian, U.S. dominated status quo of the established institutions. However, unlike women and Black students, special admissions tests and requirements were imposed on Jewish and immigrant students (Lucas, 1994). This insistence on GPA and admissions tests instituted in early 20th century was a new measure of determine the educational elite and prestige.

The landscape of higher education institutions and their relative inclusion and exclusion of populations would remain largely unchanged between World War I and into the late 1990s.

Though in 1970’s, the need arose for the native populations, who were isolated geographically and culturally from the mainstream education system, to create institutions of their own to

educate and support their community (Pavel et al., 2001). In 1978, President Jimmy Carter

signed the Tribally Controlled Community College Act that allowed Native Indians to establish

and manage their own tribal colleges. This allowed tribal colleges to form a collective that would

benefit their small student populations, establish their curriculum, and receive a small amount of

federal assistance. Then through several congressional and executive initiatives, congress

included tribal colleges as part of the 1994 Land Grant extension, which provided equitable

federal funding, land-grant designation, and expansion of target programs. This expansion for tribal colleges increased access to higher education to a neglected and underserved population of

students.

Finally, an increasingly growing population of U.S. society is the Latino community.

According to the 2000 Census, the Latino community is the second largest racial/ethnic group in the United States but a largely underserved population with regards to education (Santiago,

2006). During the 1980’s college and university leaders were noticing a large enrollment of their

Latino population. If Latinos were attending higher education, it was often to historically underfunded and chronically low achievement institutions, and if they were completing degrees it was at a significantly lower rate than their Black and White peers. The 1984 Higher Education

Reauthorization Bill introduced the designation of Hispanic-serving institutions (HSI), with the explicit intent of serving Latino students (Santiago, 2006). Unlike HBLGUs and tribal colleges

that were established to serve a particular student population, HSIs are only characterized by

their enrollment ratios, of at least 25%, rather than their institutional mission. Typically, HSIs are

part of larger public system, traditionally community colleges, and are concentrated in more

urban areas with large Latino populations. In 2003-2004, there were 236 institutions that met the

designation of HIS and, while they represent only 6% of higher education institutions, they enroll

34 almost half of the nation’s Latino undergraduate population (Santiago, 2006, pp. 2-8). In the

1992 Federal Reauthorization, HSIs were given federal designation and financial support.

Together, HSIs, HBLGUs, and tribal colleges and universities are identified as minority-serving institutions, which serve traditionally underrepresented student populations.

As HWIs continue to diversify, pivotal to that is addressing the “tension” that comes with integration. Salient to the integration of HWIs is a critical mass and the structural diversity of non-White students, faculty, and staff on campus. One means to address these pressures has been through modifications to college and university organizational structures and resources. This movement intitated the establishment of cultural centers created to address the needs of African

American and underrepresnted students at PWIs by providing a space for curricular, research, and student development (Patton & Hannon, 2008; Talbot, 2003). Many chief diversity offices can also trace the creation of their offices to this time when the United States was confronting issues of diversity as a whole (Patton & Hannon, 2008). As noted, the external and internal pressures of diversity, coupled with shift in national student demographics, find colleges and universities in search of ways provide adequate services to meet students, faculty, staff, and community needs.

Using Organizational Resources to Increase Diversity

As college and university campuses grow increasingly diverse demographically, the learning environment must also shift to reflect inclusivity. Colleges and universities have a unique role in setting the tone and education of society and provide an environment where people can interact with people of other cultures and backgrounds. Students with distinct ethnic backgrounds and cultures bring different ideologies about race in society and their views of diverse campuses, approaches to learning, and understanding of the world around them (Smith,

2015; Torres et al., 2003). The students, faculty, and staff of a college or university are vital human resources. Increasing the structural diversity of students, faculty, staff, and administrators at colleges and universities increases the likelihood of intercultural interactions, contact, and involvement by providing more diverse people to encounter, but also diversity to the pedagogy

and curriculum (Smith, 2012, 2020; Torres et al., 2003). However, many HWIs are deficient in

compositional diversity and receive pressure from external and internal constituents to address

discrepancies in composition.

Over the last several decades, pressures internal and external to higher education have

been placed on colleges and universities to address the need for diverse campus communities

(Clark, 2011; Leon, 2014; Williams, 2013). Social movements, changing demographics, and

exigencies from outside higher education put pressure on colleges and universities to address

diversity and take a proactive approach (Hoffman & Mitchell, 2016; Richard, 2000; Smith,

2015). Key political, legislative, legal, and sociohistorical demands over the last several decades

have forced colleges and universities to address the needs of diverse populations on their

campuses (Patton & Hannon, 2008). Federal legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Berg,

1964; Kim & Rury, 2007; Thomas & McPartland, 1984) and Higher Education Act of 1965

(Kim & Rury, 2007; Lucas, 1994; Nuss, 2003; Patton & Hannon, 2008; Shaw & Heller, 2007;

Thelin, 2004) opened educational access through financial aid and unrestrictive admissions

guidelines to a diverse population of students. Legal precedents like the Equal Protection Clause

of the 14th Amendment (Kaplin & Lee, 1995), Adams v. Richardson (1973; Gose, 2006; Thomas

& McPartland, 1984), Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978; Black, 2001; Gurin

et al., 2002; Lui, 1998; Williams & Clowney, 2007; Williams et al., 2005), Gratz v. Bollinger

(2003; Gose, 2006; Kaplin & Lee, 1995), and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003; Gose, 2006; Kaplin &

Lee, 1995) have played significant roles diversifying colleges and universities by desegregating schools and decreeing that educational diversity is important for everyone.

Within the last several decades, these have included access to information, a safe and nonthreatening campus environment, and services with equal opportunity for all populations

(Kaplin & Lee, 1995; Smith, 2015, 2020). Over the past 3 decades, significant regulatory pressure has continued to influence student admissions, financial aid, and desegregation; as well as faculty and staff employment opportunities through antidiscrimination practices (Hurtado et al., 1998; Kim & Rury, 2007; McLendon & Hearn, 2007; Newman et al., 2004; Shaw & Heller,

2007). While legal pressures have forced colleges and universities to increase the diversity of their institutions, social movements have also had a significant impact on diversification.

Sociohistorical influences are events that occur outside the colleges and universities environment that influence the organization and create a normative pressure. These sociohistorical events either directly or indirectly affect college and university diversity, often through stimulating discussion and initiating organizational action (Hoffman & Mitchell, 2016;

Hurtado et al., 1999; Patton & Hannon, 2008). Many sociohistorical events begin as social movements that refocus on college campuses. Beginning largely in the late 1960s with the Civil

Rights movement, student movements have served as a form of activism intentionally created to stir public discourse and disruption. As a means to create awareness and institutional change, student movements continue to address the cultural hegemony and monocultural norms of colleges and universities, predominantly at large elite or selective institutions (Hoffman &

Mitchell, 2016; Patton & Hannon, 2008; Rhoads, 1998a). Since the 1960s, underrepresented students at PWIs across the country protested and conducted sit-ins to have curricula, faculty,

37 facilities, and offices created that would meet their needs as students (Gose, 2006; Patton &

Hannon, 2008; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007).

The recent Black Lives Matter national movement has forced not just colleges and universities, but the nation as a whole, to wrestle with and reconcile issues race and the effects of

2 centuries of systemic oppression (Hoffman & Mitchell, 2016). These social movements and legistlative pressures have pushed colleges and universities to consider their internal diversity.

Indeed, Neuman (2012) argued that colleges and universities are fundamentally responsible to address the issues these movements articulate. There are also pressures from organizational and administrative precedents established at the University of Michigan, University of Connecticut,

Indiana University, Brown University, and University of Denver (Williams & Wade-Golden,

2007), historical precedence (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007), the Association of American

Colleges and Universities core values established for colleges and universities practice (Williams et al., 2005), and the permeation of norms through professional associations and standards

(Williams et al., 2005). These initiatives have aimed to change college and university organizational response to diversity on campus (Rhoads, 1998a, 1998b; Rojas, 2012). These internal and external pressures have significantly impacted the structural diversity of colleges and universities by emboldening them to admit and educate a more diverse faculty, staff, and student populations.

College and university organizations tend to favor movements or change initiatives, and provide organizational resources to support the cause when the movement aligns with the traditional academic standards (Pfeffer & Salansick, 2003; Rojas, 2012). For colleges and universities to educate a diverse population, they must attract and retain a talented, qualified, and diverse pool of faculty and student resources. It has been found that minority student enrollment

at public, predominantly White, selective universities is influenced by the number and presence

of minority role models reflected in the faculty and administration (Fryar & Hawes, 2011).

Research has also shown that racially, ethnically, and gender diverse students perform better academically when they see themselves reflected in their faculty, teachers, and administrators

(Fryar & Hawes, 2011; Grissom et al., 2009; Nicholson-Crotty et al., 2011; Pitts, 2005). Colleges and universities have attempted to close the gap of educational, structural inequity and address issues of diversity by implementing strategies for providing funding, financial assistance, and academic preparation for students, and pay and incentive structures for faculty. Without a critical mass of diversity on campus, it is difficult to retain students and faculty of color. Brayboy (2003) found that students and faculty of color are often hesitant to join campus communities where no one looks like them. For colleges and universities, a climate that is welcoming of diversity is important for attracting and retaining diverse students, faculty, and staff (Museus & Harris,

2010). There is a need for colleges and universities to be competent and deploy strategic resources to sustain and build a truly diverse institution.

The concept of managing diversity has now found its way into educational plans and

policies. The idea is that an organization consciously plans and implements a structure to ensure the maximization of diversity resources and minimize the deficiencies (Cox, 1994). Managing diversity requires a commitment and conviction to the importance of diversity, and intentionally including diversity in all areas of personnel and policy (Cox, 1994; Dancy, 2010b). Planning for diversity includes institutional planning and administrative oversight, review of diversity plans, and implementation in all units of the organization. Too many colleges and universities plan for

diversity after a crisis or racially charged event instead of being proactive (Williams, 2008). It is

hard for diverse faculty and staff to fare well at colleges and universities when the organization

and administration are not supportive or reflective of their values and interests (Hale, 2004).

However, Iverson (2007) raised a very critical critique in that higher education diversity plans

can focus on diversity as a marketplace commodity and further objectify people of color as

property used for the strategic advantage of the institution.

Proper management of targeted initiatives to increase critical masses of people of color impacts the affect and productivity of the people within the college or university. It is one thing

to broaden access for all populations; colleges and universities also need to create an

environment where diverse students feel safe and supported (Rhoads, 1998). Colleges and

universities should create diversity action plans that communicate congruence between espoused

and enacted values, and outline how the colleges and universities will not support deviant

behavior or intolerance (Cox, 1994; Iverson, 2007) as well as how the colleges and universities

will be held accountable to diversity needs (Dancy, 2010b). Competent management and

strategic deployment of diversity action plans and discourse address all members of the

commnunity and their ownership in creating a welcoming and inclusive enviornment (Iverson,

2007; Williams, 2008). Managing resources aims to ensure that diversity is incorporated into all

aspects of the organization; however, creating structural components that support constituents

and facilitate dialogue sends a strong and powerful message about the importance of diversity

within the colleges and universities (Iverson, 2007). Intentionally acknowledging the lack of

racial and ethnic diversity on campus in the curriculum, and a planning to increase the diversity

among faculty, staff, and students with specific and targeted outcomes, creates alignment

between a colleges and universities espoused and enacted values.

Everyone within colleges and universities must take part in creating an organizational

environment that is inclusive. A senior leader should have formal authority over aspects of

managing diversity. Real successful change must come from institutional leadership, and a

commitment to resources, monitoring, and planning (Hurtado et al., 1998). Across the nation,

campuses are investing in diversity with changes and modifications to their organizational

structure (Leon, 2014). The organizational structure should reflect the importance of diversity.

Structural changes alone do not lead to meaningful transformation, but real successful change

has to come from institutional leadership and a commitment to resources, monitoring, and

planning (Hurtado et al., 1998). A lack of organizational infrastructure and senior leadership,

with insufficient resources, can negatively affect diversity efforts, and colleges and universities

can revert to old habits of a cold, closed campus (Williams, 2008). Modifications to the

organizational structure to incorporate administrative-level CDOs is one means colleges and universities are adopting to manage diversity resources.

Organizational Structure to Support Diversity

Diversity work has occurred in higher education for over 50 years (Gose, 2013; Williams

& Wade-Golden, 2013). In 2011, 90% of university administrators reported pursuing efforts for a diverse student body (Fryar & Hawes, 2011). There is now a greater emphasis among college and university leadership and administration to meet accountability demands and deliver outcomes, and everyone needs to be involved—students, faculty, and staff (Dancy, 2010a). The external and internal pressures noted earlier, coupled with shifts in national student demographics, require colleges and universities to hold true to their academic mission and adequately meet the diverse needs of students, staff, and faculty by providing organizational resources and services (Dancy, 2010b). This means placing diversity into the operations of the college or university, past just mission statements and admissions targets.

Colleges and universities responses to the increased structural diversity has been largely reactionary. There has been the development of diversity centers and service offices to support the diverse population on campus. The diversity officer traces back to the Civil Rights movement and a time when the United States was confronting issues of desegregation and discrimination

(Patton & Hannon, 2008). These offices assist in the recruitment and retention of minority students by ensuring equal hiring practices among faculty (Gose, 2013). Multicultural centers were similarly created to welcome, support, and integrate racially underrepresented students as they gained access to colleges and universities (Patton & Hannon, 2008; Talbot, 2003). The multicultural movement, coined by Patton and Hannon (2008), intitated the establishment of cultural centers created to address the needs of African American and underrepresnted students at PWIs by providing a space for curricular, research, and student development (Patton &

Hannon, 2008; Talbot, 2003). Over several decades, institutions fluctuated between expanding, closing, or centralizing their cultural centers to encompass all areas of diversity (Leon, 2014;

Patton & Hannon, 2008; Talbot, 2003). Today, the task of these offices is very different and the expectations are greater. Colleges and universities have diffused diversity models where individual offices address specific campus populations, like women and gender offices, disability offices, and centers for sexual orientation (Leon, 2014). Colleges and universities cannot rely solely on the presence of cultural centers and spaces to create diverse environments. However, the creation of diversity centers and offices has partially shifted the responsibility of diversity away from other top administrators (Baber; 2010; Gose, 2013). Diversity work should be infused into all aspects of the colleges and universities—integration of diversity work into the structural mechanisms and campus resources is essential.

Colleges and universities have used committees, coalitions, faculty and staff councils,

and diversity centers to address colleges and university diversity work. Some colleges and

universities rely on the establishment of committees to carry out the diversity work within their organizations (Gardner, 2015; LePeau et al., 2019; Rhoads, 1998a; Williams & Wade-Golden,

2013). This includes informal committees of faculty and student affairs staff and workgroups focusing on areas of diversity across the institution (LePeau, 2018; LePeau et al., 2019).

However, formal organizational resources are not often dedicated to these committees and work groups (Brayboy, 2003). This leaves campus committees lacking the formal authority to enact the diversity change they have been charged with developing. Informal diversity plans remove responisitiby for senior leadership, lack capacity building, and lead to failure or inertia

(Williams, 2008). Faculty play a role in the diversity work, particularly White faculty, during the tenure and selection process (Mitchell & Edwards, 2010). At many predominantly White colleges and universities, diversity work is often left to faculty and staff of color, or other campus advocates, as part of their informal workload (Brayboy, 2003; LePeau et al., 2018;

Mitchell & Edwards, 2010). For women, their roles are viewed as “advocacy”-related and their input is often restated and reframed if not silenced (Pasque, 2010). Its not enough for the underrepresented faculty to focus on specific areas of advocacy or become the cultural

“authorities;” rather diversity should be integrated into all aspects of curriculum and required of all members of the colleges and universities to contribute (Mitchell & Edwards, 2010; Museus &

Harris, 2010). These informal organizational arrangements create separate, often unwritten, channels for navigating colleges and universities diversity work, and do not hold everyone to the same level of accountability.

According to Williams and Wade-Golden (2013), the key to a cohesive and embedded

diversity change agenda is intentional organizational strategy and formal structural alignment.

Diversity needs to be infused in the strategic thinking and planning of top administrators, and

involvement in diversity initiatives needs to occur across the institution, particularly within

teaching and learning (Anderson, 2007). Competent management of diversity is essential to

ensure that diversity plans and organizational systems are in place to maximize the advantages of

diversity (Cox, 1994). Managing diversity is critical for colleges and universities to improve

organizational productivity, internal environmental affect, organizational culture, and handling

crisis of injustice (Cox, 1994; Williams et al., 2005; Williams, 2008). Many colleges and

universities lack a logical means to manage diversity-related initiatives because of lack of

structure (Birnbaum, 1988; Williams, 2008). Essential to the competent management of diversity

is the establishment of a CDO.

Profile of CDO

Many positions throughout the colleges and universities have evolved throughout the decades, including chief information officers, chief academic officers, and deans. All were administrative creations to meet the changing landscape of not just the colleges and universities, but of higher education. The creation and integration of a CDO is no different. The CDO provides the opportunity for issues of diversity to be infused in executive-level decision making

(Cox, 1994; Gose, 2013; Leon, 2014). Much like having a chief information officer for integrating technology into the colleges and universities structure, organization, and campus, a

CDO is the diversity equivalent. Having a CDO administrator responsible for diversity not only signals the importance the colleges and universities places on diversity, but also provides organizational responsibility for diversity management.

The work of the CDO is to create a culture within the colleges and universities that

integrates diversity in every initiative. A CDO is critical to all phases of campus diversity

initiatives including planning and implementation, establishing a financial plan, and focusing

campus resources (Williams, 2008). An identified reporting structure with resources provides a

powerful message that the work of the CDO is a shared responsibility that comes from top

administrators (Gardner, 2015). A reporting structure provides opportunities to build connections

and engage the campus in the diversity efforts (Gardner, 2015; Harvey, 2014; Leon, 2014).

Harvey (2014) suggested that CDOs rely on relationship building to fulfill their responsibilities,

while Leon (2014) found that CDOs often hold “symbolic authority” with no real authority to

enact diversity change. Alternatively, Williams (2008) argued that CDOs gain access to the

president and key decision-makers, and to both symbolic and actual resources.

In addition to the formal structure, to be successful the CDO position requires strong

relationships, human resource capabilities, and comprehensive strategies (Gose, 2013; Lawrence

& Lorsch, 1967; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). Colleges and universities signal their lack of

commitment to diversity when they bury their CDO position deep within the institutional

hierarchy or do not clearly define the position’s influence. A lack of commitment is also signaled

by the diversion of organizational resources away from initiatives that advance diversity and/or

the provision of inadequate support for diversity initiatives (Arnold & Kowalski-Braun, 2012;

Leon, 2014; Williams, 2007; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013; Wilson, 2013). There is a gap in the literature concerning the acquisition and capabilities of diversity resources, specifically how a CDO navigates the resource legitimacy in the management of colleges and universities diversity initiatives.

Theoretical Frameworks

A theoretical framework is important to understand how an organization operates and

obtains legitimacy. Theoretical frameworks are largely categorized by an organization’s internal model of governance (Bess et al., 2012; Birnbaum, 1988; Peterson, 1985). Since 1974, organizational models have emerged from theories related to technology, social systems theory, environmental theory, and interorganizational theory (Peterson, 1985). Early work in higher education organizational design focused on organizational strategy and behavior rather than theory. The literature has focused on the sense-making of the administrator and the overall design of higher education (Bastedo, 2012). Until 5 years ago, the literature did not examine fully structural and organizational activities, or on the administrator and faculty. The literature has examined colleges and universities organizations from the human behavior perspective, the divergence between process and structure, and the power and influence of external environments

(Birnbaum, 1988). Organizational studies within the higher education literature comprise a small amount of the literature and have not focused exclusively on structure and governance (Austin &

Jones, 2016; Gumport, 2012). To expand administrative operations and structure, it is important that organizational literature within higher education use sources and frameworks outside of the

field.

Research in higher education is largely omitted by scholars in other disciplines (Austin &

Jones, 2016; Gumport, 2012). It is important that work coordinated within higher education

organizations contribute to the advancement of theories and concepts outside of higher education

to create new knowledge. Organizational theory provides the foundation from which to create a

formal organizational structure to deal with uncertainty in external and internal environmental

resources. Theory examines how patterns, events, and practical solutions work for previous

organizations who have experienced similar situations. Organizations establishing their

structures (i.e., positions, roles, hierarchy, and centralization) should use a theory to anchor their

establishment (Tolbert, 1985; Zucker, 1987). Organizational theory can be used to explain why

an organization’s formal structure directs resources to activities that may not directly contribute

to the technical core of the organization. Using multiple theories allows for choice from a

broader range of potential strategies (Tolbert, 1985). For this reason, the organizational

theoretical concepts of RDT, IT, and the theory of representative bureaucracy provide excellent

theoretical frameworks from which to contribute to organizational studies in higher education, as well as the empirical understanding of how diversity work occurs at colleges and universities.

Tolbert (1985) argued that RDT and IT are both needed to provide a full explanation of

why colleges and universities adjust their organizational structures to secure and retain necessary

resources. Austin and Jones (2016) explained that higher education institutions need resources to

survive and they get those by interacting with their external environment. They mention that both

RDT and IT are two of the theories that explain higher education organization’s resources

acquisition. RDT explains how institutions interact with the external environment that holds the

power of those resources; while IT emphasizes the social forces, rules, regulations, and

expectations imposed on institutions that influence their behavior, structure, policies, and

processes (Austin & Jones, 2016). Therefore, using organizational theory justifies the creation of

new elements of the formal organizational structure as a response to or a consequence of external

environmental pressures to manage legitimacy and the acquisition of resources (Austin & Jones,

2016; Tolbert, 1985; Zucker, 1987). Legitimacy is necessary for organizational survival.

An organization needs legitimacy to secure resources and collateral to carry out

organizational activities (Daft, 2010; Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003; Scott, 2014). Organizational

legitimacy is a form of social credibility by which an organization justifies its existence to secure

resources. An organization whose activities and outputs appear to be in line with the larger social

system of values gains legitimacy by the stakeholder base that advances those social values

(Scott, 2014). When an external environment (e.g., customers, suppliers, competitor) and internal

environment (i.e., employees and social networks) consider an organization legitimate, they

engage in resource exchange (Daft, 2010; Duncan, 1972; Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003; Scott, 2014).

An organization attempts to communicate its legitimacy to the external and internal

environments through congruence between an organization’s enacted and espoused values

(Scott, 2014; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983). Organizational legitimacy can exist between external and

internal environments. The external environment is comprised of all the physical and social

elements outside the boundaries of the organization that influence the operation (Duncan, 1972;

Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967). These elements include distributors and users of the service,

suppliers of materials, competitors, and sociopolitical and technological entities (Duncan, 1972).

For colleges and universities, the external environment includes government, accreditation associations, donors, future students, parents, alumni, and employers. The internal environment

is comprised of all the internal elements of the organization that influence the decision making of

the individuals within the organization (Lindsay & Rue, 1980). It includes the internal physical

and social forces of an organization that influence its operation, such as employees’ education,

background experience, decision-making capabilities, and interpersonal social networks

(Duncan, 1972; Tung, 1979). Duncan (1972) conceptualized the internal environment as having

individuals and groups of employees within the organization that comprise the organizational

personnel component, the functional and staff components, and the organizational level

component.

A vital component of organizational legitimacy is establishing social credibility through

the communication of values to the external and internal environments. Organizational theory

within higher education is still largely related to the function of governance and less so to the

establishment of structure (Neumann, 2012; Peterson, 1985). Neumann (2012) argued:

It turned the scholar’s attention from concerns about how organizations persist (which

organizational forms work best, when, and why) to questions of how leaders make sense

of and create ‘organization’ as they know it, and as others, participating in their

leadership, know it too. (p. 308)

While organizational theory influences the creation of organizational structure, inclusion of

theory in colleges and universities administration literature and practice has been limited

(Bastedo, 2012). Organizational theory works to close the gap between components of

organizational structure and the actual work of colleges and universities administrators (Austin &

Jones, 2016). By using organizational theory, we can begin to understand how the position of the

CDO influences the legitimacy of colleges and universities by guiding the institution’s diversity

efforts and creating more inclusive and welcoming campuses.

RDT

As mentioned earlier, an organization needs resources in the form of raw materials,

capital, equipment, and human faculty and staff labor resources. Higher education institutions

survive on resources, be they human, financial, capital, or technological. RDT explains how

organizations obtain and manage the resources they need to carry out the activities of their

organizations and reduce dependency on the external environment for those resources (Austin &

Jones, 2016; Daft, 2010; Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003). In RDT, an organization’s ability to obtain and preserve its resource pool is directly related to its legitimacy. The stakeholder base that holds

49 the greatest amount of resources and collateral an organization needs to carry out its activities determines what is important for each organization (Austin & Jones, 2016; Daft, 2010; Pfeffer &

Salancik, 2003; Scott, 2014). For example, when state allocation funding depends on the number of minority students enrolled in a college or university, the organization may shift to acquire and retain those resources. If an organization loses its stakeholder resources, its means of survival as an organization are threatened. Governance and structural mechanism are one way that the organization adapts to reduce resource uncertainty.

According to RDT, organizational operations and structures are coordinated to monitor the external environment to reduce environmental uncertainty and manage dependency (Austin

& Jones, 2016; Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003). When the external environment threatens to change resource allocation, the top of the hierarchy realigns the organizational structure to manage the change in dependency of those resources (Austin & Jones, 2016; Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003).

Accordingly, organizations using RDT will add or remove elements of the organizational structure to negotiate and manage dependency. Austin and Jones (2016) argued specifically the ability of senior management and trustees to intervene and manage resources is vital. This signals to the external environment the organization’s commitment to the resource dependency relationship and reduces resource uncertainty (Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003; Scott, 2014; Tolbert,

1985).

Colleges and universities require resources from the external environment, including attracting and retaining diverse students, faculty, and staff. Mission statements and diversity pledges are one means colleges and universities communicate their espoused values of diversity, while programming, policies, and procedures are an example of enacted values (Dancy, 2010a).

Colleges and universities use these means to engage in resource exchange with the external

enviornment. Some colleges and universities have also added CDOs into the organization to monitor resource exchange. More specifically, within the last decade, more than 60 colleges and universities have added this position into their organizational structures, with 72% of those positions added within the last 5 years, and almost 98% operating at PWIs (Arnold & Kowalski-

Braun, 2012; Clark, 2011; Leon, 2014; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007, 2013; Wilson, 2013).

Approximately 26% of CDO positions operate at colleges and universities in the midwest region

and 68% at public institutions (Leon, 2014; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007). In 2014,

approximately 33% of CDOs across the nation had a vice president, vice provost, and/or vice

chancellor title (Leon, 2014; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). Incorporating the CDO position

into the colleges and universities organizational structure signals to the stakeholder base the

management of current diversity resources and acquires new diversity resources.

Organizations need acceptance and credibility from their external environment to survive.

Institutional Theory (IT) clarifies how organizations achieve acceptance and credibility from

their external environment through legitimacy (Austin & Jones, 2016; Daft, 2010; Scott, 2014).

It asserts that organizational legitimacy occurs when an organization aligns its norms, values,

and beliefs with the external environment. Meyer and Rowan (1977) explained that in IT organizations operate as cultural and social entities that depend on the opinions of “out groups” to shape their behavior. These norms, values, and beliefs are measures of social pressure and power influenced by the social construction of reality of the external environment (Meyer &

Rowan, 1977; Scott, 2014). Legitimacy can exist without fairness through power structures of resources and alignment, “Legitimacy is fundamentally the result of a multilevel process (i.e., legitimation) that involves inputs at the level of the broad encompassing social framework, at the

51 level of the object of legitimacy (for example, the team for a team reward system), and at the more local level of actors who mediate the construction of reality that grants or undermines legitimacy” (Aime et al., 2010, p. 61). A college or university will organize its governance structures to accommodate and conform to the external pressures and often homogenize structures to similar, successful organizations (Austin & Jones, 2016). These external pressures can come from a variety of social forces such as legal standards, societal advancements, professional associations, interest groups, public opinion, and social movements.

External pressures on a colleges and universities legitimacy can be regulatory, normative, and/or mimetic forces (Daft, 2010; Scott, 2014). Regulatory, or coercive pressure, standardizes organizational behavior through rule setting, monitoring, and sanctioning with rewards or punishments by an entity external to the organization, most often the government; and is carried out most commonly through legal precedent, policy, and laws. In regulatory pressure, the organization seeking legitimacy is obligated to comply, there is minimal ambiguity in application of the rules, and a third party applies the rules and resolves disputes (Austin & Jones, 2016; Daft,

2010; Scott, 2014).

Mimetic pressure can also occur through the imitating organizational structures, practices, and processes of other successful organizations. Mimetic pressure comes from organizational comparison within a field or industry and centers around shared concepts of how an organization within that field should look and perform, most often through benchmarking

(Austin & Jones, 2016; Banerji, 2005; Daft, 2010; Scott, 2014). University governance tends to conform around organizational “best practices.” Pressure also exists between organizations through colleges and universities benchmarking. Isomorphism happens when organizations conform to commonly used strategies, structures, and practices that appear rational to the

52 external social systems and, therefore, are deemed legitimate. These strategies, structures, and practices come from interactions with other organizations in the same industry or field, or may be imposed by other stakeholders, like state regulations (Deephouse & Carter, 2005).

Institutional benchmarking pushes colleges and universities to address unwelcoming environments and racial climate (Museus & Harris, 2010), which has led to the establishment of

CDO positions. Many institutions have added CDO positions as a means to influence external and internal legitimacy. The position of CDO in college and university organizational structures is a response to the external environmental pressures of diversity and intolerance.

Finally, normative pressure is a duty or obligation to comply with a set of externally defined values and norms used to standardize organizations within a particular field. Normative pressure is often prescriptive and constrains organizations through recommended behavior, most often through social or association pressure (Daft, 2010; Scott, 2014). Normative pressure can also come from internal organization members as they define conditions of their work, the organizational values, and the preferred professional practices (Austin & Jones, 2016). Over the last decade, colleges and universities have felt the pressure from external entities and internal constituencies to address diversity both inside and outside of the classroom.

Internal Legitimacy

It is also important for organizations to obtain legitimacy from their internal environment.

The conditions of the internal environment have a significant and pervasive impact on the organization and operations. Internal environments are important because they influence how employees act, think, and feel at work (Williams et al., 2014). The internal environment also includes the employees’ interpersonal relationships and interactions with others across the organization. This shapes the comfort, security, and safety of the members within the

53 organization (Schein, 2010). The internal environment of a college or university is comprised of the faculty, staff, and students.

The individuals who comprise the internal environment have a set of values that underpin the way they work, communicate, and interact. It is most impactful when dedication for diversity comes from “active, visible leadership from the top” (Gardner, 2015, p. 5). A heterogenous administration produces higher quality results, reflects broader social values, and incorporates more diverse constituency perspectives in decision making. People within an organization look for the administration to be representative of and served by bureaucrats or administrators that represent public interests and values (Pitts, 2005). A CDO in a college or university is not just about representation for diverse groups, it is also about ensuring that the organization and its internal environment are following through on the commitment to value diversity. When the bureaucrats or administrators of a college or university are more reflective of the population they serve, they are more likely to represent or act in the interests of their constituency groups in regard to policy interests and initiatives.

Individuals also make judgements and determinations about the legitimacy of organizations and individuals based on messages they encounter. Source creditability is “the believability of a message, or set of messages, and [credibility] is dependent on the status of the sender in the minds and eyes of the receiver” (Umeogu, 2012, p. 112). For a CDO to have the legitimacy of the internal environment, the CDO must not only represent the values and interests of diversity to the constituency, they must also have the authority to speak about and on behalf diversity initiatives. Sources who are deemed more credible, are more likely to have their messages heard and respected by a receiver, than those with lower credibility; and the factors that influence source credibility are the perceived expertise and trustworthiness of the source

(Hovland et al., 1953; Jahn et al., 2020; Umeogu, 2012). It is important to have a senior-level administrator, particularly on a predominantly White campus, who represents and voices the values and importance of a diverse campus (Banerji, 2005). Therefore, a CDO role needs to be deemed a subject-matter expert and be structured as a senior-level administrator.

An organization or individual is can be granted greater legitimacy when their messages

and actions are perceived as credible and aligned with what Jahn et al. (2020) described as

“attributed motives” that drive the organization. Legitimacy judgements are influenced by an

“attitude” or evaluation of whether an organization or individual is credible in their position and

message in aligning their motives, word, and deed (Jahn et al., 2020). Credibility is what engages

the audience to determine whether the message will be viewed positive or negative. To obtain

credibility with internal and external environments, an institution must hire the appropriate CDO

for their institution. Williams and Wade-Golden (2007) proposed that a CDO must be supported

structurally, but also have the “charisma, integrative thinking, and capacity to build lateral

relationships” (Leon, 2014, p. 77) to carry out the work. According to Worthington et al. (2020), it was argued at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in 2007 that professional standards of practice be in place for the CDO role. These standards of institutional and professional practice would give direction to the diversity equity and inclusion work that the

CDO was charged with enacting. Combined with strategic organizational structure, the specialized expertise of the CDO position would “advance the recognition of the position”

(Worthington et al., 2020).

The work of the CDO is not just representing minority interests, but also influencing the campus perspective of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Leon (2014) found that CDOs often hold

“symbolic authority” but no real authority to enact diversity change. The symbolic representation

of a CDO role can work to shift the mindset of those within the organization cognitively. For

minority constituents, it can shift the cognitive perception of the organization towards

inclusiveness and valuing their perspectives by visually reflecting the population in the

administration (Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009). For those members of the nonminority group,

it may increase representative outcomes by signaling increased expectations for all constituents

(Theobald & Haider-Markel, 2009). For CDOs, this symbolic representation is important

because their work involves actively engaging the whole campus in diversity efforts to create a

more inclusive environment at every level and initiative of the institution (Gardner, 2015;

Harvey, 2014; Leon, 2014). Literature shows it is not enough for a college or university to have a

CDO position; the position needs the campus to provide legitimacy to carry out the work.

Resources and Legitimacy of CDO

U.S. higher education, often idealized as the best in the world, is not without its competing demands from both an external and internal environment. Pressures for revenue, reform, enrollment, reputation have not changed over 30 years, in fact they have increased

(Dickeson, 2010). Since colleges and universities seek to meet the demands of external and internal environments, staying attuned to these changing demands allows the organization to obtain the legitimacy they need to acquire necessary resources to continue providing core academic functions. When the legitimacy of an organization is in question, the organization may modify their structure to address those demands and continue acquiring resources.

The power shifts between external environmental influences (e.g., state governments

trying to control and manage the higher education institution or businesses operating in a more

globally competitive environment) and internal environments (e.g., campus unrest over the racial

and social injustice happening across the United States) has adversely affected the governance

56 and management of colleges and universities by shifting the power and decision-making dynamics away from shared governance and collegiality to competition for resources (Austin &

Jones, 2016; Dickeson, 2010). For higher education in the 21st century, it is the commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). This means the specific creation and integration of DEI initiatives and intentional organizational of a CDO role.

In order to effect real change in DEI, research indicated colleges and universities need intentional initiatives. This includes strategic planning, task force reports, climate survey, operationalized recommendations, assessment, providing human and financial resources, and dedicated leadership (Arnold & Kowalski-Brown, 2012; Stanley et al., 2019; Williams, 2013;

Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007). According to Stanley et al. (2019), sparse research exists about the about the impact of educational plans on DEI in higher education and there is only emergent literature on the CDOs and their role in organizational change around DEI.

In fact, Worthington et al. (2014) in their articulation of standards for professional practice for CDOs stated, “the strategies CDOs use for institutional transformation must be expansive, while at the same time taking into account the expertise of senior leaders, and advancing a diversity portfolio that reflects institutional values, mission, and culture” (p. 3). The foundational work of Williams and Wade-Golden (2007) provided the archetype for the CDO roles today. Their study found despite the relationships that CDOs themselves had built through their own personal charisma, integrative approach, and lateral connections, there were still challenges largely attributed to poor role construction and lack of integration into the organizational structure (Leon, 2014). A CDO can be a catalyst for organizational DEI and change, but that commission is influenced by access to resources and legitimacy.

Resources –What We Know

Institutionalizing DEI at PWIs entails a host of factors including comprehensive goals and

objectives, review of policies and practices; but it also takes committed leadership and resources.

We know from earlier literature that resources include human, financial, capital [assets], and

technological resources. We also know that support staff, reporting structure, and resources to

fund the work are also of importance (Leon, 2014; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007). Walton

(2013) identified literature on resource dependency that identifies another component of the theory: priorities, power, and influence that can be applied to the application of resources for

DEI and the CDO role.

Priorities

A college or university can have the best conceptualized plans, but nothing happens on campus without the dedication to and wielding of organizational resources. Leon’s (2014) work identified campuses that invested in DEI infrastructure through mainly human and financial resources and that healthy budgets and critical support staff can sway the influence and authority of the CDO. The ability for the CDO role to fund the programs and initiatives in their charge is vital. In their study, Williams and Wad-Golden (2013) identified that of a total 32 CDO’s at large institutions (over 20,000 students) most CDO’s (~50%) operated with a budget of less than

$500,000, which is roughly $25 a student. Having an “adequate” operating budget and having a comparable and equitable budget to their campus peers seemed to play a key role in the CDO’s impact (Leon, 2014).

The commitment of resources to diversity is the gesture of commitment to the cause.

Expenditure of time, energy, and labor of diversity – needs the persistence of people to continue to champion diversity initiatives even if one of the outcomes is reinforced hierarchies.

The CDO also needs the human resources of a dedicated staff. In the study by Leon (2014),

CDO’s who lacked the necessary amount of capable staff to do the work, appeared “stretched thin” and it communicated a message the position is not valued or a priority to receive the staff resources it needs. There is a critical need for the CDO position and office to be staff appropriately to serve constituents, infuse the vision, and enact the DEI objectives (Arnold &

Kowalski-Brown, 2011; Leon, 2014; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). In situations where there is an abundance of resources – allocation of those resources tends to be more evenly distributed and there is mutual interdependence. However, in times of external resource uncertainty and scarcity (e.g., in budget cuts or decrease in physical resources) RDT can explain the political nature of resource allocation (Walton, 2013). Units that are determined to be more central to the organizations operation, either for producing revenue or results, will receive the bulk of the resources. In turn, those entities are rewarded with more power, status, informal authority, and increased access to resources; thereby, providing greater institutional legitimacy that can lead to blocking other units or initiatives trying accessing resources in the future. This also advances the interests of the power holder when there are no other competing interests.

If resources dry up or become depleted, it is likely individuals committed to the work have also dried up or become depleted. If DEI work is valued less than other aspects of the organization, the resources might also become depleted (Ahmed, 2012). Therefore, the CDO might also rely on relevant coalitions.

Power

For RDT, part of the responsivity of the CDO, and the necessity of the creation of a position, is to monitor the external state and local politics surrounding DEI. The CDO might also need to create powerful working relationships with external and community agencies, alumni

bases, and business (Arnold & Kowalski-Braun, 2011). An aspect of RDT is that organizations will seek to realign their infrastructure to support the CDO role. However, sometimes a

constraint of a CDO can be the internal environment. If CDO creation includes restructuring units or departments, and without a proper plan, the restructure can create uncertainty and distrust (Leon, 2014; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007). A successful CDO might enlist the assistance and support of existing relationships and campus coalitions.

Partnerships are one resource that campuses have used to address structures that hinder student success, challenge the status quo, and address DEI. LePeau (2018) determined there is often a group of individuals on campus who collectively enjoin themselves to serving as DEI advocates, or social gadflies. These advocates worked to expose and address issues of structural inequity in curriculum, access, and support. These social gadflies disrupt structural systems that might be barriers for colleges and universities from reaching DEI; and did a lot of work on their campus to influence change (LePeau, 2018). Stanley et al. (2019) found CDOs who empowered and engaged campus leaders and stakeholders in developing strategies and making recommendations at the unit level made more progress toward the diversity plan because they were composed of people from across the campus community.

Sometimes the institutional diversity efforts need a coalition of people. The president’s

council for diversity (PCD) is a council or committee of diversity stakeholders who work

together to develop and implement a shared diversity plan (Kezar et al., 2008; Williams, 2013).

Scholars have agreed infusing diversity into every aspect of curriculum and cocurriculum is vital

to advancing truly inclusive campus environments—from a simple diversity agenda to truly

espoused diversity, inclusion, and social justice. The types of diversity partnerships matter and

campuses who use pervasive partnerships (where entities have equal stake and responsibility)

have more transformative DEI work on campus leading to institutionalized change (LePeau et

al., 2019; Stanley et al., 2019). Some held power for influencing policies and procedures,

training, campus climate assessments, recruitment and hiring, and some diversity strategic

planning. Kotter (1995) emphasized the importance of forming a powerful guiding coalition by

assembling groups of people “with enough power to lead the change effort and encourage the

group to work together as a team” (as cited in Stanley et al., 2019, p. 261). Stanley et al. (2019) stated:

We found that institutional leadership does not rest solely at the levels of the president

and provost. We understand how power is perceived with these titled positions within the

campus community, and know that the ability to influence change in the behavior of

others comes from the top of an organization. However, organizational change for

diversity and inclusion is complex, and everybody’s responsibility. Therefore, the CDO

worked collaboratively to form coalitions across colleges and administrative units,

comprised of faculty, staff, community members, students, and alumni. (p. 261).

The authors shared this case study at the 2018 annual conference of the Association of American

Colleges and Universities. Conference participants appreciated the use of organizational change models such as Kotter (1995) to conceptualize organizational change with the assessment of diversity plans. Organizational change as it relates to diversity, and CDOs who often facilitate this change, cannot happen without understanding and working within the institutional context and culture.

Ahmed (2012) cautioned against relying on a committee, one individual, or position to be responsible for “doing the diversity work.” It has to be organizational commitment. However, by

61 relying on DEI to be everyone’s job, no one will take up the mantel responsibility, it must be given to someone.

Influence

The leadership efforts of the CDO working collaboratively with campus partnerships and being supported and resourced by the president and provost, as one administrator explained, is key for organizational change (Stanley, et. al., 2019). Critical integration from senior leadership with regards to resource identification and allocation is critical for longevity. Presidents and senior leaders are helpful for facilitating campus-wide change, but presidents are pivotal for success and organizational learning. Research has focused in the effort of the president to influence diversity objectives (Kezar, 2007; Kezar et al., 2008).

The president has to be the figure head for coalescing a DEI agenda, and for championing a DEI campus environment. They can also leverage and allocate necessary resources, either through direct budget allocation, advocating to the board of trustees, or to external constituents

(Kezar et al., 2008). Ahmed (2012) mentioned starting with the commitment of leadership because “this commitment is more likely to affect a sense in commitment in others” (p.133). It spreads from the top to the bottom of the organization by setting up champions, lower ranks, and grass roots networks. The president’s words matter because they emphasize a very public sentiment of the university (Cole & Harper, 2017). This is particularly true when almost 80% of college presidents are from the racial majority (Harvey, 2014).

Resources - What We Do Not Know

Campus leadership can be responsible for the espoused values and norms of the organization. Kezar (2012) discussed the ways presidents can influence DEI from their own role by engaging in the web of support for DEI, but what does that support look like for the CDO.

There needs to be shared governance. Bensimon and Neumann (1992) crafted seminal research

on institutional leadership teams, specifically that presidential leadership was best when it

brought together collective experiences to inform presidential decisions. Organizational agendas

do not solely arise from the president but from a collaborative group of their trusted advisors

including VPs and deans, as did leveraging resources for strategic initiatives.

An absence of resources not only affects the efficacy of the CDO but the value that the

internal environment places on diversity. What happens when campuses resources are scarce?

Walton (2013) found that when one public institution was facing significant budget cuts, even

though campus leaders collaborated on the budget plan, resources were directed to preserving the

“core” academic mission of teaching, research, and service. While nothing was expressly

mentioned about funding diversity efforts, leaders had to look at reducing the “fluff” and refocus

and rethink priorities (Walton, 2013). Additionally, Walton expressed that the findings supported

Pfeffor and Moore’s resource dependency assumption from 1980; those departments with greater power or political capital were able to exert greater control over the budget process. So, how does the CDO exert political power to acquire resources in not just a time of scarcity but also in a time of abundance?

If diversity is not funded or staffed, is it really that important to the institution? The human resources are just as vital as the financial resources, sometimes these roles are created to address this issue on campus. So, what led them to not succeeding? Sometimes these diversity advocates were asked to step into positions because they were a social gadfly, but ultimately, that might not have been the best position for them (LePeau, 2018). Some diversity advocates may have been too “young” in their career to really take on the added work of advocacy, and that can

be draining; having it be a senior leadership position was vital to providing sustainability and

support (Kezar et al., 2008).

One campus entity we have seen attempt to address DEI is cultural and bias response

teams (BRT; LePeau et al., 2018). With a lack of dedicated resources, these BRTs used their accumulated social capital and campus influence to address issues of bias. However, while these

BRTs may have some status within the campus community, they likely lack the sufficient leadership and resources to make DEI initiatives pervasive. The PCD also provided campus leadership with recommendations and diversity expertise. The PCD is one means to legitimize diversity on campus; however, some of the PCDs lacked physical and financial resources. This

left the work of the PCD to be coordinated through whatever means necessary, most often their

social capital, by providing resources for action these would move from merely symbolic

committees to a form of institutional commitment (Ahmed, 2012; Kezar, 2012; LePeau, 2018).

These social gadflies did a lot of work on their campus to influence change, some of them also

leveraged their White privilege to get suggestions heard differently, which further entrenched

their institutions in aspects of the status quo. These social gadflies and campus coalitions worked

to support diverse students and their learning, often in small pockets, but likely did not disrupt

inequitable systems, practices, or policies.

What we do not know is how these things are influenced and leveraged for the CDOs. So,

we know that all these things are impactful for diversity, and for making DEI a priority. But,

what does that mean for the chief diversity officer position, how then do these committees for

diversity work with the CDO and do they give legitimacy to the CDO? How do resources—

financial, human, and technological—influence of the role of the CDO, and then how do these

CDO roles impact DEI?

Legitimacy – What We Know

The professionalization of the CDO role, promoting them as the subject matter expertise, and commitment from leadership influences credibility. Credibility is one means of attributing legitimacy to an organization or role. Williams and Wade-Golden (2007) asserted that paramount to the “primary source of influence” for the CDO is their position within the structure, including reporting lines to the president or provost. “In essence, the higher an institution defines the CDO rank, the more political and symbolic power this officer will enjoy” (Leon, 2014, p. 81).

Establishing the credibility of the CDO role is especially important for newly created

positions (Arnold & Kowalski-Braun, 2012). We can also postulate from IT that the CDO

position needs to not just be symbolic but needs to be action oriented. To create institutional

change, there needs to be disruptive action to the organizational systems (Fulton et al., 2019).

What we have learned from IT is how these positions come about through pressures from

the external and internal environment (Harvey, 2014). There is research on how these positions

should be structured as far as job description, duties, and their area of control (Arnold &

Kowalski-Braun, 2012; Stanley et al., 2019; Williams, 2013; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007)

Institutions are continuing to expand their CDO roles in large part because of external demands

from government and social pressure (Harvey, 2014; Leon, 2014). Organizations can also

acquire and maintain resources from the external environment that share congruence with the

organization’s values. Organizations provide cues to stakeholders about their organizational

identities in an effort to seek legitimacy and those cues are communicated through external

messaging (Daniel & Eckerd, 2019). Through the use of “sensegiving” organizations and

stakeholders engage in sending out messages and signals about who they want to be perceived as

and receivers return the interpreted perceptions (Daniel & Eckerd, 2019). Several means of

sensegiving are values statements, word choice on websites, organizational profiles, strategic

plans, and organizational charts.

Also, sometimes individuals are rewarded with higher status and legitimacy, which in turn motivates them to maintain power and status. Legitimacy can be a collective consensus of the team and the social acceptance of an individual to the team. Members of team who provide more relevant technical knowledge or skill might be viewed as more legitimate and valuable

(Aime et al., 2010), especially if they provide more contribution to the core academic mission

(e.g., finance or the provost). When the team members have different “subject matter expertise” that contribute differently to the team goals, it can alter perceived legitimacy with regards to status and competence.

Integration Into Senior Administration

Senior leadership teams (SLT) can be derived from a variety of different contexts, but senior leaders were often appointed as a result of need for transformational change and integration, which has been done with assessment, technology, student success, and now, diversity. “Diversity is institutionalized when ‘senior people’ champion diversity. The commitment of leadership is necessary for values to become embedded within organizations”

(Ahmed, 2012, p. 132). You can have many nice policies and programs, but without senior management championing those initiatives, they can be forgotten and replaced. Senior management is necessary for policy to be translated into action—going beyond lips service.

Without senior management’s commitment, organizations cannot “do what they say” (Ahmed,

2012; Kezar et al., 2020).

Senior leadership is responsible for not only identifying the organizational priorities, but

also determining the organizational resources needed to achieve those priorities and then making

66 them available to the individuals who do “the work” (Kezar et al., 2020). Review of the research on SLT showed that shared leadership facilitated true institutional transformation, but lack of leadership left the initiatives void of direction (Kezar et al., 2020). The selection of SLT is often relative to the institution’s “core academic mission” but there is a vital need for diverse perspectives. The other important commitment from the senior leadership was that their incorporation was intentional—not “happenstance”—and their commitment was not performative.

Performative Action

What cannot happen is calls for DEI and then nothing to back it up; what is often missing from the commitment to diversity is action. Closing the gap on DEI means matching action and rhetoric (Ahmed, 2012). Diversity has to be an integrated and infused part of how the institution

“thinks and feels.” This “think and feel” approach begins to move the institutional diversity past a set of tick boxes and into transformative and integrative action. Statements of commitment provided through documents that are sent out might signal a commitment to diversity, but they are often just that—a signal—versus having bounded institutional commitment. A document or statement does not make solely for institutional commitment; there must be action otherwise these statements are just performative.

According to Ahmed (2012), performative action is providing a statement of support for sole the means of validation with securing an effect of a particular person or group of people.

The tick box approach is when the pretext of a statement is for the sole appearance of “being behind” a commitment. Presidents can influence legitimacy and credibility through inclusive hiring practices and publicly supporting individuals they hire. It is critical the senior leader did not just happen to value and commit to diversity, but rather they were intentionally chosen for

67 their commitment and that thinking was integrated into their senior management thinking.

Commitment must be spread through “influence, promotion, and drive” of the senior leadership

(Ahmed, 2012). If you can start there, change can filter through the institution. Though, we also know that executive rank alone does not guarantee the other senior leaders will support the CDO work or buy-into DEI initiatives (Leon, 2014).

Legitimacy - What We Do Not Know

External legitimacy can be given to organizations for their diversity work through external organizations like Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED; LePeau et al.,

2019) and NADOHE (Harvey, 2014), but does that extend to the CDO role on campus? In 2008, there were few empirical studies on the presidential leadership for DEI (Kezar et al., 2008), and while Kezar did provide more empirical studies, we are still examining the influence of presidents on the legitimacy and credibility of CDOs and moving the diversity agenda forward.

The success of the CDO depends on organizational design and personal characteristics of the

CDO (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007), but what about the legitimacy of the role itself?

Kezar et al. (2020) identified deficiencies to understanding the central influence of SLTs in higher education, particularly how SLTs develop trustworthiness, credibility, and collaboration. Since SLTs also have access to and the direction over resources we need to understand the team environment explored through resource dependency or institutional theories that help uncover how external entities may hold sway or influence over the work and priorities of SLTs (Kuipers & Stoker, 2009). Investigation is also need for SLT’s into the specific issues of power through legitimation theory, which posits that legitimacy validates power and status of certain members of teams and it orders and reinforces certain operations of team practice (Kezar et al., 2020). While the research supports the importance of visible and vocal senior leadership,

68 especially the president, to diversity efforts, does this same support extend to CDO in providing legitimacy? We have seen the role and impact of this on DEI, but we need to extend this into the role of the CDO.

Based on a study by Rabl et al. (2020), we can infer that being inclusive of diversity and equity gives the organization relevant value to their internal employees, and with strategic incorporation of DEI into structure, polices, practices, and procedures, they found it can signal importance to stakeholders (i.e., internal employees). Employees who viewed the organization as being inauthentic reacted negatively to DEI and were less likely to view an integration within the organization. However, those employees who have a high personal value for DEI, and see committed leadership and management, were more likely to be actively engaged in committing to DEI integration efforts. This research found it led to increased trustworthiness and credibility of the DEI efforts, but there is still a lacking of connection to the CDO’s role legitimacy with their internal environment.

Conclusion

Colleges and universities have unique needs and operating structure. They should, therefore, be studied as organizations separate from other industries. Complexities in the operating structure, environmental pressures, simultaneous administrative and faculty structures, and member identities set colleges and universities apart from other organizations. Colleges and universities must respond to rapidly changing dynamics in their external and internal environments while remaining true to their academic tenants. Leaders need a solid understanding of the complexities colleges and universities face in our changing society and how their organizational structure responds to operate efficiently and effectively.

The work of a CDO on a college or university campus is of vital importance to address

the changes happening within society. The work of a CDO in the colleges and universities is

critical to the work of the organization; the faculty, staff, and students of the institution; and to

demonstrating the college or university’s commitment to a diverse society. When CDOs are

positioned within the decision-making matrix, they have an impact on college or university’s policy. Their proximity to decision makers and ability to influence change is critical to obtaining and maintaining external and internal legitimacy. This legitimacy derived from the external and internal environments is critical for accumulating and using resources vital to the college or university organization and diversity efforts. In the next chapter, I explain how CDOs operated

with a PWI organizational structure to gain and maintain legitimacy with the internal

environment.

CHAPTER 3: METHODS

Without scholarly insight and research on effective implementation, chief diversity officer (CDO) positions lack support for intentional and impactful action. There is a need to explore the incorporation of CDOs into college and university structures to address issues of diversity and to examine how the role of the CDO is structured to accomplish the diversity work.

Currently, there is a limited body of scholarly, empirical work on the organizational development and structure of CDO positions. The purpose of this study is to expand this body of literature by conducting qualitative study to examine how the CDO role gains legitimacy from the internal environment at predominantly White institutions (PWI). In this chapter, I outline the research design, including institution selection, study questions, data collection and analysis, and ethical considerations.

Research Question

The interest in the topic emerged from my curiosity in connecting theory to practice combined with the scarcity of literature concerning how colleges and universities add or remove positions within their organizational structure. As mentioned in Chapter 2, studies on organizational design have struggled with the connection between empirical research and practical application. Understanding the work of the CDO within PWI organizational structure will aid college and university leaders in better developing and supporting the CDO position. I was specifically interested in the conception and innovation of CDO positions by PWIs, and if merely having a CDO in the organizational structure communicates organizational values to the organization’s internal constituencies. I was also interested in whether there are other means by which diversity work is supported. Identifying how the CDO supports and impacts diversity at colleges and universities will aid in creating intentional climates of inclusiveness.

During the investigation of the literature, I developed the following sub-questions:

1. How and why was the CDO office established at each university?

2. What are the established and current values, norms, and beliefs of the CDO?

3. What are the values, norms, and beliefs of the internal environment?

4. Where does the CDO lie within the formal organizational structure?

5. Does the CDO have a resource base, and if so, where does it draw its resources from

(human, financial, capital, reputation, individual)?

6. How does the CDO communicate to his/her constituent or stakeholder base?

These sub-questions, reflected later in the interview protocol, aided in developing a comprehensive research question: How does the CDO role obtain internal organizational legitimacy at a predominantly White college or university? According to Yin (2003) and Baxter and Jack (2008), determining the most appropriate research method is dependant on the research question. To answer this question, I determined that qualitative inquiry was the best way to understand this organizational phenomenon.

Why Qualitative Inquiry?

Qualitative methods center on the examination of a central phenomenon or concept and allow for the central topic or concept to be developed as the research unfolds (Creswell, 2008,

2014). Based on my research question, I have chosen study this topic qualitatively to answer the

“how” of the question (Baxter & Jack, 2008). A phenomenon within qualitative research is a situation or fact that is observed as happening or existing that requires or warrants explanation and inquiry by those who have experienced the event (Creswell, 2014). Qualitative methods are about the discovery of a phenomenon from the understanding and experience of a group or individual (Donalek & Soldwisch, 2004). Qualitative methods provide an entry into the

discovery and understanding of an experience or phenomenon that quantitative methods cannot

capture, particularly the inherent human and personal aspects of a program or intervention

(Patton, 1980). This method is most appropriate because it allows the researcher to address the

phenomenon from the participant’s perspective rather than the researcher.

Qualitative methods allow the researcher to explore aspects of the phenomenon (i.e.,

interactions, interventions, relationships, committees, programs) to be deconstructed and

reconstructed (Baxter & Jack, 2008). Using a qualitative method allows the participants to make

meaning of their holistic account of the experience. Patton (1980) explained that qualitative data

are “raw data from an empirical world, that is open-ended that describes in-depth the experiences

of people” (p. 22). In Patton’s (1980) assertion, qualitative methods capture the depth and detail

of an aspect, while quantitative data captures the breadth and variation of particular

programmatic aspects. Qualitative methods develop the narrative of a phenomenon rather than

attempting to prove or disprove the theory of the phenomenon (Creswell, 2014). Qualitative

research allows the values of the contextual environment and participants’ experience to emerge

throughout the process of data collection and analysis.

The focus of this research is understanding the phenomenon of internal organizational

legitimacy as it relates to the role of the CDO at a PWI. Here, legitimacy is the assumption that the CDO’s activities are desirable within the internal organization’s socially constructed system

(i.e., norms, values, and beliefs in the environment; Daft, 2010; Scott, 2014; Suchman, 1995).

Organizational legitimacy determined by an external constituent but made sense through the subjective meaning of an individual within an organization. To investigate how the internal

organization constructs legitimacy around values related to diversity, the influence of the CDO

role on diversity, and the internal environment’s communication of legitimacy for the CDO role,

I decide to use a constructivist paradigm (Creswell, 2014). I used the experiences of the CDO and written documents to construct the narrative of how the CDO is given or obtains organizational legitimacy. This narrative was used to develop a picture of the diversity work of the PWI, the influence of the CDO on campus, and how organization communicates the value of the CDO to internal and external constituents.

Methodological Approach

Within organizational design science, organizations have been viewed as artificial

creations by individuals for a particular context or objective. Organizational phenomena are

shaped by “socialized human beings who are capable of designing intelligent actions” that aim to

influence a set of goals for the organization (Avenier, 2010, p. 1238). To understand the

construction of organizational legitimacy to the organizational role of the CDO by the internal

environment warranted that I approach this research from a constructivist paradigm. According

to Creswell (2014), the constructivist paradigm relies on the participants’ point of view and their

construction of reality. A constructivist paradigm allows the participants to explain and construct

meaning within their stories and experience around a central phenomenon instead of a researcher

entering with their own preconceived notions (Baxter & Jack, 2008).

Using this paradigm is important because it emphasized the participants’ understanding

and engagement within the CDO role and the organization (Creswell, 2014). To understand the organizational role of the CDO, the constructivist paradigm captures the subjective nature of meaning making of the individuals who occupy the organizational role of the CDO. This paradigm centers on understanding the participants’ relative experiences, perspectives, and reconstructs those perspectives with other elements in a cohesive narrative (Guba & Lincoln,

1994). The constructivist paradigm allowed me as a researcher to incorporate the individual

74 stories and narratives of the individual in the CDO role to create a narrative of CDOs organizational legitimacy.

I believe that the constructivist paradigm is the most appropriate for looking at this topic of internal legitimacy of the CDO role. The concept of internal legitimacy is, by nature, a socially constructed phenomenon, a set of actions and values established by the stakeholder base that advances the larger social system of values (Scott, 2014). Using a constructivist paradigm allowed me to explore those socially constructed values and realities. Internal legitimacy is minimally researched and theorized, and a constructivist paradigm allowed the themes to emerge dependent on the stories and experiences through the people that occupy the role. Avenier (2010) illuminated how the constructivist paradigm can be used in organizational science to legitimize and elaborate on knowledge about organizations. This paradigm allowed the participants to establish legitimacy for themselves and if the CDO role was organizationally legitimate using their own experiences and perceptions of legitimacy.

Role of the Researcher

It is important to address the role of the researcher in this work. Using a constructivist paradigm in a case study design places the researcher as a participant in the process (Avenier,

2010; Baxter & Jack, 2008; Creswell, 2014; Guba & Lincoln, 1994; Stake, 1995). The role of the researcher in the constructivist paradigm is to understand and uncover the social reality as it is understood by an individual or set of individuals and to uncover a phenomenon with the least influence possible (Stake, 1995). It is important as the researcher to discover the “truth” without determining what the truth should be. In this paradigm, continued construction and deconstruction of the interpretation occurs, which often results in a shared understanding between the researcher and participants (Fink, 2000). The role of the researcher in a

constructivist paradigm in organizational design science is to marry the universal, external reality

with the participants’ individual interpretations and constructions of reality (Avenier, 2010;

Stake, 1995). As a researcher using a constructivist paradigm, it is important to understand that what a person believes is a product of their reality and validated by their experience (Stake,

1995). For the researcher this leads to a practical application of generic knowledge gained from the circumstances around a specific setting and the appropriateness of this knowledge use in comparable settings (Avenier, 2010). Therefore, my objective role as a researcher was to make meaning of each individual reality into a collective narrative and practical application.

As a researcher, one must understand and determine their role, the level of involvement,

and participant interaction they will have as a researcher, and then how, as a researcher, to

collect and focus the data (Patton, 1980). Using ideas from Stake (1995), I, as the researcher,

entered the case with a sincere interest in learning about the cases without preconceived notions.

As a researcher in a constructivist paradigm, I acknowledge the findings were co-created

between myself and the participants. I acknowledge that by using this paradigm, I encouraged

the participants to express their meaning making, even when I believed it may or may not be line

with previous research or my line of thinking and inquiry. I acknowledge the perspectives of the

participants may have been influenced through question selection and interview probing. In my

analysis, I determined themes among participant insights that may provide an opportunity for

researcher bias, which I attempted to limit through research protocols and analysis. In addition, I

understand that my identity as a White female may have influenced the interactions I had with participants around conversations of diversity.

I am interested in the topic of CDOs through the lens of organizational structure and its role in communicating organizational values. As a college and university administrator and

76 student affairs professional, is it my responsibility to aid in and support the creation of inclusive learning environments for all who enter the colleges and universities at which I work. As a scholar, my axiology is in the administrative practices of colleges and universities leadership. I am interested in understanding the implications of adding a CDO without providing the position resources and decision-making power, and the message being communicated about a college or university’s commitment to and value of diversity. I would like to build upon and add to the literature to create more inclusive and welcoming campus communities for all students, but I would also like to provide tangible practices for college and university leadership. As a researcher, I approached this topic and participants with the utmost care, responsibility, and professionalism. As an administrator and professional, I will use the research to inform my administrative policies and practices to create a more diverse and inclusive campus community.

Introduction to the Method

To investigate the research question above, I used a qualitative interview-based method.

Qualitative interviews can be used to describe a process or integrate multiple perspectives. The qualitative interview allows the researcher to gather unique information or interpretation about a particular phenomenon from a specific individual or set of individuals that the researcher themselves were not able to observe (Stake, 2010). For use within organizational design, the qualitative interview can be used to describe the structure and functioning of a particular unit, which might be difficult with merely external observations; or the process with which a person within a particular organizational unit chooses to engage (Weiss, 1995). Therefore, qualitative research methods, like interview-based, are an accepted method to study organizations, processes, and programs and to expand upon the generalizations of theories associated with those

topics (Yin, 2014). There are multiple approaches of how to structure the interview and it should be guided by the purpose of the study.

A prominent feature of qualitative interview-based study design is the researcher.

Whether browsing through documents or listening to a personal experience, the researcher serves as an investigator identifying the right path to follow. As an investigator, a qualitative interview uses the research question as a guide to craft intentional questions for a respondent, while determining when a respondent’s account adequately answers the question posed of the phenomenon (Creswell, 2008; Stake, 2010; Weiss, 1995). Different from a casual conversation, qualitative interviews should get deep into the complexity of the phenomenon being studied, and typically include open-ended and semi-structured to unstructured questions (Stake, 2010). The investigator also has the decision to interview either a single individual or multiple individuals.

A single “case” can be used to explore one critical, common, revelatory, or longitudinal situation

(Yin, 2014). Stake (2010) indicated multiple interviews in a study are instrumental for

researchers who want to gain a holistic understanding and insight of a topic by collecting

multiple perspectives, and should be structured by the researcher to provide for comparison. The

qualitative interview-based study design will determine four to 10 relevant cases to include and

should be articulated in the research protocol.

Researchers can be dissuaded from using qualitative interview methods because of the

time, rigor, and validity. Weiss (1995) explained how qualitative interviews can be labor

intensive through the required interviewing and analysis. Sometimes it can produce a depth of

knowledge about a particular area of interest or nothing substantial. A researcher may continue

circling back to a particular interviewee several times to further expand on a line of inquiry as a

deeper analysis uncovers more questions. This can lead a researcher to engage in a potentially

lengthy process (Stake, 2010; Weiss, 1995). Often qualitative interviews are characterized as

lacking scientific rigor, but can provide insight a phenomena that might not have been uncovered

through other methods (Weiss, 1995).

The validity of qualitative research is also important and done by conveying to the reader

the accuracy and credibility of a researcher’s findings. This can be accomplished through

member checking, providing thick descriptions of the findings or themes, use of intercoder

agreement, peer debriefing, or an external auditor (Creswell, 2014; Stake, 2010). It is understood

a qualitative interview-based study may not contain the adequate sample size to generalize to a

larger population, but it does provide an opportunity to empirically explore a theoretical concept or principle. While Avenier (2010) identified that the grounded theory approach was potentially the most “fertile” method of doing research within the constructivist paradigm, it was not the

only method; and any method would work as long as it was carried out with “ethics, ostinato

rigore, and explicitness” (p.1248 ).

r ele va Research Design

When using a qualitative interview-based study method, it is important to establish a

logical design for the research. A research method guides the design structure of the study,

including sample selection, the determination and structure of the questioning, and the collection

and analysis of data. The qualitative validity of the findings was used to support decisions and

inferences made during the process (Creswell, 2014; Yin, 2003, 2014). According to Creswell

(2008), qualitative methods are more than just observing people or asking a few questions. A

solid qualitative interview-based study design should be structured and intentional.

Interview Participants

Researchers using qualitative interview-based research may rely on a purposeful but less

of a formulaic method of selecting individuals and sites to understand the phenomenon. Creswell

(2008) asserted that sample selection must be able to withstand critical critique and the strategy

must fit the investigation of the research question. To understand organizational legitimacy of a

CDO through the lenses of resource development theory (RDT) and institutional theory (IT),

theory or concept sampling was the purposeful sampling strategy employed. In this strategy,

individuals are selected for their ability to help generate, discover, or explain a theory or concept

within a theory (Creswell, 2008). The number of interviewees or sites can vary depending on the

researcher and the study, but should be realistic to completing the study.

Using the design methods and approach, and the research sub-questions, I established a

criteria for identifying viable CDO interview samples for comparison. I started screening by

identifying which colleges and universities had a CDO via the National Association of Diversity

Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) list of current institutional members circa 2014 (see

Appendix A). I used this association as the reference point considering they were referenced in

several articles, they publish the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, and they are the

recognized association for CDOs. Membership in this association is voluntary both institutions

and members (NADOHE, n.d.). I compared the list with Williams and Wade-Golden (2007)

where they identified several colleges and universities as pinnacle emergent and established

CDOs. Cherenfant and Crawley (2012) identified six aspirational colleges and universities that

were used in the establishment of the CDO at Robert Morris University. I cross-referenced the

institutions from NADOHE, Williams and Wade-Golden (2007), and Cherenfant and Crawley

(2012). This comparison chart revealed 14 institutions for review (see Appendix A).

The next important criteria for selection was the length of time in existence. According to the literature, CDOs are a relatively nascent within colleges and university structures, with approximately 80% of the current positions established within the last 15 years, particularly at

PWIs (Arnold & Kowalski-Braun, 2012; Clark, 2011; Leon, 2014; Williams & Wade-Golden,

2007, 2013; Wilson, 2013). The next criterion was internal environment. Since this study focused on legitimacy within the theoretical lenses of RDT and IT, the cases selected must have had verifiable human, financial, technological, and/or capital (i.e., physical) resources to be studied. The cases must have had an identifiable internal environment or stakeholder base that the CDO served. I created a chart to review the potential samples and gathered data from the 14 initial institutions’ websites about their CDO including reporting structure, organizational chart, and data on their available resources and constituency influence. Based on Tolbert’s (1985) assertion that both RDT and IT are needed to explain fully the administrative changes to organizational structure at colleges and universities, I used purposeful sampling to divide the cases into two categories: colleges and universities that qualify as (a) resource-based (i.e., human, financial, capital), and (b) constituency-based. The cases had an identified CDO within the college or university; allocated human, financial, and/or capital resources; and/or serve a designated constituency base.

Finally, Stake (2006) suggested that to understand the phenomena most effectively, a variety of environments, institutional sizes, and institutional types should be used to identify and select cases. Since my research questions focused on PWI, I filtered out any historically Black or

Hispanic serving institutions. I also identified if the institution was private or public, the region of the United States, and the size of the student population. Therefore, using these screening criteria, the theoretical classification criteria (Tolbert, 1985), and the recommendation to keep

sample size manageable, I narrowed the 14 initial institutions down to eight. The CDO at the

eight institutions were contacted for an interview. Four CDO’s responded to participate, two

declined, one CDO was retiring, and one institution never responded to the request. An institutional narrative and CDO overview are provided in Chapter 4 in the case analysis.

Data Collection

The best approach for this research was to study each CDO individually within the research question, thoroughly exploring the bounds, context, and experience of each interviewee, and to then create a comparison. As the researcher, I attempted to gather all pertinent data for each site prior to moving on to the next. However, interview schedules did create some overlap

in data collection. I used data collection techniques that allowed for the greatest opportunity to

bind the idea or concept together within each case. I used the available documents from each

CDO website to develop a composite of the CDO prior to each interview. Patton (1980) and

Stake (2006) discussed using questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, document analysis, and

observation to provide the greatest data range for thoroughly understanding each case. I focused

my approach to CDO interviews and document analysis.

Instrumentation

I began my data collection with a simultaneous document analysis and semi-structured

interviews with the CDO at each of the four institutions. The document analysis included

mission statements of the diversity office and university, diversity plans, public statements made

through the office, committee charts, organizational structure, position descriptions, newspaper

articles, and archival documents on the history and establishment of the diversity office, much of

which came from institutional websites and internet searches, with some being provided by the

CDO (Leon, 2014). These documents assisted in providing information about the foundation for

the establishment and function of the CDO, the espoused and enacted norms and values of the

CDO, and the associated mission of the CDO.

Over a period of 4 months, I coordinated 60- to 90-minute video conference calls with the

CDO at each selected institution. According to Creswell (2008, 2014), there are several ways of conducting a qualitative interview including face-to-face, telephone, email, and focus group. I selected the face-to-face approach using teleconferencing software. This allowed me the opportunity to “meet” with the participants given we were geographically dispersed. The teleconference provided me the benefit of recording the interview for audio transcription and the ability to focus on the participants and their reactions. The teleconference also allowed schedule flexibility for the both the participants and researcher. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed. Transcription was done through access disability accommodations software and reviewed by the researcher. All study participants were offered the opportunity to review their interview transcripts for accuracy.

The semi-structured interview protocol consisted of questions on organizational resources at the CDOs disposal; their ability to work within organizational structure; their mission, vision, values, and plans for diversity at their colleges and universities; and the organizations view of diversity (see Appendix B). These questions, along with information about the study and IRB disclosures (see Appendix C), were emailed to the participants ahead of the interview. These interviews provided an insight into the colleges and university’s legitimacy with the internal environment by identifying how they allocate resources for diversity initiatives. Conducting these interviews was important because I explored the CDOs’ interpretation of the social norms, values, and rules of their internal environments, as well as the perceived acceptance of the

CDOs’ skills, knowledge, competence, and resources (Deephouse & Carter, 2005; Suchman,

1995).

The interviews also assisted in learning about the institutional context for the office,

structural design, and strategies of the office (Leon, 2014). In interviewing the CDO, I began to

understand the values of the CDO position as well as the CDOs’ interpretation of social norms and the university’s internal environment. I also requested permission to obtain documents related to the creation, establishment, and management of the CDO that were not available on their website. Three of the four universities had a task force style report available on their website that highlighted the creation of their CDO office and position. The fourth institution did not have a document available but provided historical context during the interview. The document review, combined with information gathered in the interview, provided the contextual setting for each institution, which is discussed in Chapter 4.

Potential Problems

Prior to data collection, it was important to acknowledge and address any potential problems that may arise within the research. I believed I would encounter problems gaining access to research sites and participants, availability of information, and the political nature of the topic being studied. Concerning politics, the CDOs are responsible for representing the diversity work and increasing the access, equity, and inclusion of diverse populations at their college or university, and their positions are inherent areas of criticism (Williams & Wade-

Golden, 2008). The work of the CDO can be collaborative across the college or university; thus, it is both decentralized and highly politized (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2008). As the researcher

I navigated the sensitivity the of participants disclosure by maintaining anonymity of the institution and the participant, so that the CDO could speak freely.

I did encounter an interesting circumstance gaining access to the CDOs. For each of the

four institutions I contacted the office of the CDO. In Chapter 4, I will provide an overview of

each institution’s organizational structure, but these were all executive-level positions. One institution has a unique structure that it has an executive-level CDO and a deputy CDO that reports to the executive-level CDO. When I contacted Institution B to speak with their executive- level CDO, I was directed to the deputy CDO who was responsible for the campus initiatives and day to day operations. As the researcher, I do not feel that this difference was enough to warrant dismissing the participating institution from the study.

Data Analysis

In a qualitative interview-based study, where multiple samples are intentionally selected

to provide an explanation of a theoretical concept, the researcher has the challenge of

maintaining the individual case story while binding the themes and phenomenon into a cohesive

analysis (Stake, 2006). Qualitative methods are an interpretive process, making personal assessments on what “fits,” and no single accepted approach to analyzing qualitative data

(Creswell, 2008). Using Creswell (2008, 2014) as a guide, I analyzed each individual case by

manually reviewing each CDO interview transcript four to five different times individually and

systematically. Throughout the data analysis, I engaged in coding, memo writing, concept

mapping, and peer debriefing. The entire data collection and analysis last over 14 months.

Coding

The object of the coding process is to make sense of the abundance of data through an

inductive process of whittling down the data. Creswell (2008) identifies several potential steps in

the coding process.

I begin the coding process by listening to each interview and comparing it to the

transcript. This initial reading provided the opportunity to correct any mistakes in each transcript

including missing words or phrases, misspelled words, and correcting inaudible passages. It also allowed me to begin memo writing on observations including big ideas.

After each transcript had an initial review, I read each transcript a second time and conducting a line-by-line analysis. Each line, sentence, or statement was given a descriptive word, or code. These codes were saved in a separate version of the transcript and were copied over to an excel spreadsheet. This spreadsheet was then used to filter the frequently used codes.

Next, each transcript was run through the Otter transcription application. This transcription application provided a word clusters—identifying frequent themes throughout the transcript. I

used the aforementioned data analysis process for each case. Throughout each review, I was

taking notes of general themes that were repeated throughout interviews. Using the word clusters

and the data memos, I created a concept map. This concept map and the frequent codes from the

line by line analysis began to generate themes.

Themes

The specific identification and examination of data results in codes that are collapsed down into themes. The inductive approach allows for codes and themes to emerge instead of pre-

establishing a specific code of the researcher’s assumptions. This multiple level of coding

analysis ultimately produced the rich, detailed themes discussed in Chapter 4. After I have coded

each case separately, I compiled all the themes from each case into overall themes. I repeated the process this time listening to the interview making mention of inflection and emphasis from the participant that would not have been reflected in the transcript. I also noted pertinent quotations that emphasized a theme or provided validity to the theme.

Using the concept mapping, the line by line coding, and participant quotations provided

for a rich thick theme descriptions. This reductive approach means that some of the individual

case codes may be lost to the collective analysis of the research question. The implication of this

process is that the specific details of each case may not be reported as significant, but rather how

each case contributes to the overall result. To combat this potential loss of data, I kept the

integrity of each individual case by providing themes of each individual case prior to compiling

them into coordinated themes.

Quality Concerns

To maintain the integrity of the research, the researcher must establish that they took care

to ensure the trustworthiness of the data. One of the central contentions of case study research is the lack of valid and reliable data collection and analysis procedures by researchers. It is important that different design techniques be used throughout the process to ensure the validity and reliability of the study (Creswell, 2008, 2014). One means was the use of the case study protocol. The case study protocol was developed to maintain ethical standards and consistency throughout the research. This study protocol was developed using the Indiana University’s protocol for research study (see Appendix C). This research protocol documented that I would contact participants via email to schedule a 60- to 90-minute video teleconference interview. The protocol also included that in the solicitation email participants would be informed of the purpose of the study, the research procedures, the steps to secure confidentiality including keep the recordings on a secure folder, and the right to withdrawal from the study at any time. The protocol also determined which documents will be requested and obtained, how each CDO will be contacted, and the review process. It also documented how the researcher would inform the

87 participant that interviews were being recorded and allowed the participant to identify themselves under a pseudonym if they choose.

Another quality consideration is the validity of the researcher. One method I used to maintain trustworthiness was peer debriefing. Understanding that I am a single researcher conducting a qualitative-interview based study, the ability to have a peer-coder was not possible.

However, during the analysis I worked with an editor who also provided peer debriefing. The particular editor has a doctorate degree in the field of higher education, has worked in a collegiate administrative setting, and, therefore, provided requisite experience and knowledge to provide peer feedback. The editor provided important clarifying feedback about the theme use, their descriptions, and the supporting passages from interviewee transcripts.

In qualitative inquiry, the investigator may arrive at a variety of answers through a variety of methods. The quality and credibility of the work are derived from the researcher’s experience and reputation as well as their explanation of methods used and why certain data points were important to collect. Patton (1999) discussed ways in which rigor, credibility, and quality can be established through the data collection and analysis process, including the investigator’s training and background. Patton maintained that true credibility and quality come when the researcher makes determinations about who they are and how they situate themselves in their study, and then articulates why the data were collected and analyzed in the method chosen.

Ethical Considerations

At the time of my initial proposal, I was both a student and employee of Indiana

University. While I was not employed within the CDO office at the time, to avoid any potential conflicts of interest, Indiana University was removed from the list of participant considerations.

However, at the time of my data collection, I was no longer an employee of Indiana University, I still choose not to include the institution in my data collection. As mentioned above in my research protocol, I did submit a research protocol and study prospectus to the Indiana University

IRB, which was approved (see Appendix C). In the interview protocol is contained a sample of the email that was sent to participants of the study. It was also requested my participants that I send a copy of the questions to them ahead of time, which I obliged (see Appendix B).

It is important to note that following the data collection and during analysis my dissertation, I had to switch chairs. It is also important to note that this necessity had nothing to do with me, my study, or my participants. While this presented no issues to the integrity of my study, data analysis, or findings, it was something that allowed me to create a connection with my participants. The mutual association allowed me to engage in a deeper dialogue with my participants that might have otherwise been absent.

Summary and Limitations

The goal of this qualitative multiple case study is to answer the research question: How does the CDO obtain organizational legitimacy at a predominantly White college or university?

It is not feasible to present an exhaustive list of limitations to the study. However, I did encounter one limitation around the accessibility of institutions who fit the criteria listed above and their willingness to participate. There were several institutions who were contacted who choose not to participate either because the CDO was retiring, the CDO had just left the position, or they did not respond to several email requests for participation. There were also areas of potential interest that the research will not address, such as issues of power and college and university leadership, impact of the CDO on campus climate, the current campus climate for diversity, and representation from faculty and staff. While these issues were not explicitly part of

89 the interview, some themes still emerged through the data collection. Finally, the research and literature on CDOs is emerging and there are few studies or avenues to direct the exploration.

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS

This study examined the organizational legitimacy of the chief diversity officer (CDO) position in relation to organizational structures and resources through the following research question: How does the CDO obtain internal legitimacy from faculty and staff at a predominantly

White college or university? Based on my review of higher education literature, I developed several objectives to establish and define the context of internal organizational legitimacy and answered the research question:

• How and why was the CDO office established at each university?

• What are the established and current values, norms, and beliefs of the CDO?

• What are the values, norms, and beliefs of the internal environment?

• Where does the CDO lie within the formal organizational structure?

• Does the CDO have a resource base, and, if so, from where does it draw its resources

(i.e., human, financial, capital, reputation, and individual)?

• How does the CDO communicate to his/her constituent or stakeholder base?

The first section of this chapter presents the institutional profiles of each campus in the study, inclusive of organizational structure, CDO role creation, campus environment, stakeholders, and resources. A conclusion is also provided for each institutional profile that articulates a unique aspect of each institutional structure. The second section provides a brief overview of the CDOs interviewed and their perceived internal legitimacy. The third section provides an overview of the themes and subthemes across the four cases.

The profession is quite new and small; therefore, general descriptions of the institutions and CDOs were used to retain the integrity and privacy of the participants. Where appropriate,

direct quotes were included to expound upon and support a concept or idea. Finally, the acronym

DEI is used to refer to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and programs.

Institutional Profiles

I sat with four CDOs from predominantly White institutions (PWI) to discuss their roles

and the impact of their roles on their campuses. The interviews were conducted over Zoom and

each lasted at least 1 hour. Each CDO was in their role at the time of the interview. All CDOs

spoke about their unique experiences and provided insight into (a) their roles (i.e., attributes and

creation), (b) organizational structures, and (c) human, financial, and capital resources. How they

worked with constituents and stakeholder groups and how their work impacted their campuses

and communities was also discussed.

The institutional profiles were compiled using data from my interviews with CDOs as

well as organizational charts, websites, and other documents found on websites that provided an

understanding of the roles, structures, and work on campus. These institutional profiles help

place the interview results in the following section within their proper institutional contexts.

Institution A

Institution A is a private, religiously affiliated institution located in the mountain west,

situated in a populous downtown city. Founded in the mid-1800s, the institution enrolls

approximately 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students. According to the institution’s

compositional student diversity dashboard, in 2018, 68% of undergraduate students were White,

11% were Hispanic or Latino, 4% were Asian, 4% multiracial, 2% were international, and 2%

were Black or African American. In comparing this data to 2014, the Hispanic or Latino

population had increased in 4 years by 3%, the international and Black or African American

populations had decreased by 1%, and no increases or decreases occurred for the White, Asian or

multiracial populations. While graduate student enrollment increased the aggregate numbers of

racially diverse students, the percentages remained relative to the undergraduate population. Of

the undergraduate student enrollment, 15% were Pell-eligible and, of those, 46% were White, and 51% were students of color. Two percent were identified as “unknown.” In total, 35% of students of color were Pell-eligible compared to 11% of their White counterparts.

According to a New York Times profile on their students, the average median family income was $163,000 and 65% come from the top 20%. Only 3.5% of student families made

$20,000 or less a year and 14% of student families made $630,000 or more a year. It is unknown what percentage of Institution A’s students moved up two or more income quintiles as an adult from their family income, and 1.4% of students came from a poor family to become a rich adult.

The median student income at age 34 was $51,200.

The university admits students of any race, color, and national and ethnic origin to all the

rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the

school. The institution conducted a campus climate survey of students, faculty, and staff and

reported the demographics and experiences of the community. Campus leadership has evaluated

campus DEI initiatives, missions, visions, and values for more than a decade. Institutional

leadership articulated that better integration and critical efforts to align systems and structures

with the mission were needed to meet the exciting challenges of an exceedingly diverse

community and society. The institution has a comprehensive diversity office and website, which

includes staff profiles, a mission statement, a vision statement, upcoming events, and diversity

documents.

CDO Role Creation

The position of CDO at Institution A has evolved over the last 5 years. Initially established as a director-level role for multicultural affairs, the CDO position has been elevated twice: once to senior advisor to institutional leadership and then to an executive, cabinet-level administrator. The CDO stated several individuals have served in the role of CDO since its creation, and that they were the “third or fourth person in this role.” This reclassification of the role was important because it acknowledged the need for someone who was not only knowledgeable of DEI but also able to lead institutional efforts.

The primary focus of the CDO role at Institution A is to provide direction and leadership on inclusive excellence in academic affairs. The CDO perceived other focus areas to include (a) serving as the primary shepherd of DEI initiatives of the academic experience, (b) working with search committees to enhance faculty recruitment and retention, (c) providing guidance on executive-level leadership searches, (d) engaging with faculty on inclusive learning environments, and (e) developing and collaborating on DEI programs. The CDO also served as an internal consultant (i.e., primarily to academic affairs leadership, including deans and department chairs).

Organizational Structure

The organizational structure of Institution A provided a level of understanding about the value of inclusive excellence at the institution. As previously noted, the CDO sat on both the president’s cabinet and provost’s cabinet and providing direct, executive-level input on DEI.

According to the CDO, the organizational structure provided some unique and complex features:

While they are housed in academic affairs and report to the provost, the institution also has executive-level CDO-type positions in both student affairs and human resources. The CDO

shared, “executive leadership makes a tremendous difference,” and by having a diverse senior leadership team, the CDO was one of several voices at the table speaking up for DEI, which was important for holding people accountable when incorporating DEI into everything within their spheres of influence.

One challenge of this three-pronged approach was the considerable confusion they encountered during their transition to the role 4 years ago. Prior to the reorganization, an oversight of the multicultural center was part of their administrative portfolio. During the transition, the multicultural center received a new name and mission, and was moved into the student life portfolio. The center for multicultural excellence still existed but was housed in student life, which created confusion. Additionally, the CDO’s official office was renamed to include diversity and inclusion in the title. These positions worked collaboratively and communicated regularly.

When asked if having separate CDOs for students, academics, and human resources was confusing, the CDO explained that many of their functions overlap, as faculty are also employees and collaboration was important. This CDO viewed themselves as a “coach” and verbalized the importance of having a point person: “And so, I think it’s important to have the lead, the lead- point person.” I followed up with a question about scalability for CDOs a national-level model and they said:

If I had my way, we’d have chief diversity officers in every unit and every position. I

think the more folks we have committed and dedicated to this work, the better the chance

to move the institution forward. That being said, I think you have to have clear lines of

communication [and] clearly defined portfolios.

However, at the time of the interview, the institution’s leadership hired an external consultant to

look at this three-pronged DEI organizational structure and the consultant viewed it as

innovative, scholarly, and intentional.

Campus Environment

According to their website, Institution A aspires to build a campus community that is

welcoming to all people. The mission of the diversity and inclusion office is to provide

university-wide leadership, guidance, and accountability in developing a diverse, equitable, and

inclusive academic environment. This mission is achieved through campus and community

partnerships and collaborations, and by serving as an institutional resource that advances the inclusive excellence of the institution’s mission and strategic plan. The work of the office is to advocate for historically marginalized communities and promote diversity, inclusivity, and success by impacting and influencing institutional policies, practices, procedures, and programs.

The diversity and inclusion office website provided valuable resources, articles, and information on their commitment to enriching and deepening the intellectual environment that a diverse campus climate and culture provides. The website also included resources like diversity strategic plans and campus partnership information.

The CDO primarily works within academic affairs to impact DEI in the academic milieu.

When I asked the CDO about their interactions with the rest of campus, particularly around diversity initiatives, the CDO mentioned their primary responsibilities were in academic affairs working with faculty, staff, and graduate students to impact diversity and inclusion efforts in the classroom and through student academic progress. By working collaboratively in academic affairs, the CDO was the primary provider of DEI resources and influenced change in curriculum and classroom policies and practices around diversity and inclusion.

One campus climate challenge was the limited interaction with undergraduate students outside of the classroom. The work of the CDO office included influencing undergraduate curriculum and classroom environments, as well as encouraging diverse participation in academic careers. For example, they worked to transition an office of multicultural affairs using a deficit-based model to a center for multicultural affairs using asset-based model. Rather than conceptualizing diversity as a problem involving only disadvantaged, underprepared, and culturally deprived people, they celebrated and capitalized on diversity as an asset where unique talents, experiences, and perspectives are brought to the learning environment by each individual and benefitting the entire community experiences.

Resources

Having human, financial, and technological resources dedicated to DEI work is very important. The CDO was often asked by faculty to review courses for inclusive practices.

Furthermore, the institution had recently approved an academic minor in critical race and ethnic studies, which required additional human resources. While there are quite a few employees doing the work, the CDO stated there is a need to build a bigger infrastructure with more full-time staff. At the time of the interview, there were three full-time employees in the office of diversity and inclusion solely dedicated to DEI work: an executive-level administrator serving as the

CDO, an assistant executive-level administrator, and a mid-level director.

The assistant executive-level administrator was responsible for ensuring curricula was inclusive and conducting research on best practices for innovative curriculum. This position was a half-time faculty/half-time administrator position. The position also oversaw an interdisciplinary research institute with five postdoctoral researchers who studied and addressed

inequality through research and publication and taught courses. This postdoctoral research

program is for developing innovative research and practice for inequality.

The mid-level director was charged with (a) overseeing DEI efforts for faculty hiring,

retention, and training, (b) overseeing long-range DEI strategic planning, and (c) heading the

faculty fellows program, which embeds five full-time associate faculty members into academic

units as DEI support. These part-time appointments in the CDO office serve as points of contact

in their academic units and as academic department-level DEI resources bringing faculty

guidance for implementation. They provide support to underrepresented faculty and inculcate

DEI into pedagogy and practice.

According to the CDO, there were two committees that “do some heavy lifting”: a

diversity and equity advisory committee that reports to the president and an academic diversity

and inclusion council that reports to the provost. These committees have worked to facilitate

diversity and hiring audits, new faculty orientation programs, campus culture of inclusive

excellence surveys, and, most recently, a long-range strategic plan. They have also coordinated an annual diversity summit to present on the DEI work on campus. Furthermore, they looked at

DEI annual performance reviews and coordinated a series of faculty workshops to better understand and address the advancement of DEI in the classroom. In addition to these groups, part-time faculty, staff, and graduate students serve in various voluntary capacities. Between the work of committees and the collaborative nature of the office, DEI touches all aspects of the campus community and engages individuals outside of their functional roles.

When asked if funding for DEI initiatives on campus was adequate and comparable to other entities on campus, the CDO stated the DEI academic programs, research initiatives, and faculty fellows’ programs were well-funded. They also mentioned that “while every entity could

always use more funding, training and development seem to be a key area where funding could

increase.” It seemed like more funding support was needed for additional human resources for

the CDO and the campus as a whole, specifically middle management. According to the CDO,

DEI work falls short in building capacity because institutions are lacking individuals with the

knowledge, skills, and abilities to implement the vision or mission. Resources should be devoted

to “close the gap between, you know, good intentions and best practices.” Devoting resources to

middle management will allow DEI to get operationalized.

As mentioned previously, there are multiple people on campus with direct DEI

objectives. Having CDO-type positions that interact with different campus constituencies and

populations further supports and expands DEI human, financial, and capital resources dedicated

to engaging with students around diversity; however, too many staff or disconnected resources

can create confusion, especially among students.

Stakeholders

Understanding the CDO’s stakeholders was important because they have a bearing on

DEI work. There are multiple constituents on campus, such as students, faculty, staff, and

administrators. Because of the organization’s unique structure, this CDO’s sphere of interaction

existed mainly with senior leaders, deans, and department chairs. Their work primarily touched

faculty through curriculum and hiring and building inclusive learning and working with campus

DEI committees to influence DEI initiatives and practices.

Because there are multiple diversity and inclusion entities on campus to support

undergraduate students, it was hard for undergraduate students to perceive and understand the

role of the CDO; it was not clear if the CDO was working on their behalf because they did not

physically interact with them and they were unaware of what was happening behind the scenes.

While several entities existed to support DEI efforts for the multiple populations of campus

constituents, the CDO stated:

I think sometimes when communication gets a little tough, you know, you may lag a little

bit in becoming aware of student matters. And, when, you know, we had some student

protests in the past couple of years. I get involved when that occurs as a part of the team

responding to those. So, I would say the day-to-day aspects of student life, outside of how

we support and impact the classroom environment, yeah.

For the CDO, it was important to understand students may not directly see the work and

impact, but that did not mean they were not actively working to impact the student experience.

The CDO acknowledged, while their work was done primarily with faculty and in academic

affairs, it was for the benefit of students. While there was less interaction with undergraduate students because of the organizational structure, the collaboration with the other two CDO entities (i.e., a CDO for students and a CDO for human resources) allowed them to meet regularly and work collaboratively on issues that impacted all students, faculty, and staff. This collective approach provided collaboration and communication across all DEI efforts, which was important because it allowed all the campus constituents to have a representative seat at the table.

Conclusion

The fact that the CDO is executive level, and reports to the president and provost, aids in

their advocacy of DEI initiatives. This access to executive leadership allows the CDO to ensure

DEI initiatives are at the forefront of the institutional leadership decision making. However,

there is an opportunity for the CDO at this institution to acquire more human and financial

resources. The CDO mentioned that much of campus requests from faculty are more advice on

reviewing and revising their course curriculum. This CDO could be served by having one or two

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additional full-time professionals dedicated to consulting on DEI. Although the CDO has

adequate financial resources, guaranteeing diversity is funded at the same level as other campus

priorities is important for longevity.

Overall, the most interesting and unique aspect of this institution was their three-pronged

organizational structure, which is different from the ideal models outlined in higher education

literature; however, it appeared to work for this institution because it incorporated more

executive-level voices for DEI initiatives across the campus. In their model, the CDO assumed a

consultative approach so DEI would be integrated into the academic units. This infrastructure

allowed for horizontal collaboration of DEI and less vertical directives. While this structure can

appear to be very siloed and insular, their approach of having the three CDOs meet regularly

worked.

Another interesting component of this CDO structure was the incorporation of an

interdisciplinary center researching diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education and

across all social spectra. The research center provided graduate researchers an opportunity to

look at ways to address DEI in all aspects of society and how structural inequality can be better

addressed. The innovation of the faculty fellows was also a persuasive aspect of their structure

and academic integration. The benefit of having faculty fellows provided the opportunity for DEI

to be merged into curricula through peer support and faculty endorsement allowed for instituting

lasting curriculum change, cross-campus integration, and inclusive learning environments.

Institution B

Institution B is a public, research institution located in the midwest and situated in an urban college town. Founded in the early 1800s, the institution enrolls approximately 46,000 students. Institution B advertises their students are a mosaic of races, cultures, languages,

101 religions, and points of view. A student composition dashboard is available on the institution’s website. Of their enrolled undergraduate students in 2016, 65% were White, 15% were Asian,

6% were Hispanic or Latino, and 5% were Black or African American. Nineteen percent were

Pell-eligible.

According to a New York Times profile on their students, the average median family income of a student was $154,000 and 66% come from the top 20%. Only 3.6% of student families made less than $20,000 per year and 9.3% of student families made $630,000 or more a year. Fifteen percent of the students moved up two or more income quintiles as an adult from their family income, and 1.5% came from a poor family to become a rich adult. The median student income at age 34 was $68,700.

The institution has a comprehensive diversity office website that includes staff profiles, a mission statement, a vision statement, upcoming events, and diversity documents. In the last 10 years, institutional leaders engaged in an extensive historical review of its strategic objectives and plans on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Five years ago, the institution’s president called on the institution and its key constituents (i.e., students, staff, faculty, alumni, and medical school patients) to address gaps in the mission for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. As part of this charge, a task force was created to conduct a comprehensive DEI evaluation. A year later, the president and provost hosted a diversity summit and released the 5-year diversity plan for becoming an increasingly diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment. As I mentioned in

Chapter 3, this institution has both an executive-level CDO and a deputy CDO, and will refer to both throughout with regards to their roles within the unique structure.

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CDO Role Creation

While this campus’s executive-level CDO role and the corresponding diversity office

were created out of the diversity strategic plan, the CDO role was not new at the campus. The

CDO explained that for almost 3 decades, the institution has “had an individual leading diversity primarily in the academic space.” Before the reorganization of the current CDO role, it was previously housed in and focused on academic affairs. Following the strategic plan, the role was expanded to offer a much broader campus impact. The executive-level CDO ushers diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives throughout the institution and ensures DEI is integrated into all aspects of the institution’s strategic plan, impacting diversity throughout campus and the local community. This new focus on diversity initiatives came from a variety of campus factors colliding together—new leadership, institutional conversations around benchmarking, and the media attention of student unrest. These three simultaneous occurrences created a reframing and restructuring of DEI on campus.

At the time of the interview, the participant was a deputy CDO charged with developing a centralized DEI plan from more than 51 individual plans of 15 schools and departments (e.g., athletics, medical complex, student affairs, and administrative units). The deputy CDO identified their role as “pointing to the bailiwick of my responsibility, and that is ushering our institutions through our really big D [diversity] and I [inclusion] planning effort.” According to this deputy

CDO, their role included (a) providing support to campus with DEI planning tools, (b) convening regular conversations with leaders and stakeholders around the campus, (c) developing and maintaining annual reporting and accountability structures, (d) cultivating partnerships and opportunities for DEI training with faculty, staff, students, and (e) developing inclusive strategies and practices in teaching, learning, and engagement. Referencing strategic planning and their

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involvement in teaching and learning, the deputy CDO stated, “Bringing together those two pockets of expertise and in leading this unit is a critical component of what I do for the university.”

Organizational Structure

At such a large and complex public institution, the need for a large comprehensive structure was important. According to the institution’s website, the executive-level CDO works with the provost, has a dotted line report to the institution’s president, and serves as an advisor to the president’s executive cabinet. The deputy CDO explained, “Having the CDO positions embedded into the organizational structure does not leave it up to chance when leadership transitions.” The executive-level CDO oversees a larger team of senior- and mid-level administrators responsible for overseeing daily operations and the integration of the diversity strategic plan and DEI initiatives.

Campus Environment

For Institution B, the campus climate around diversity and inclusion has historically been fraught with complexities, which provided a compelling need for strategic diversity initiatives.

For over 20 years, several longitudinal studies were conducted that captured student experiences with diversity on campus. Research and national benchmarking identified institutional needs and strategic proactive measures for implementation. The institution had also been involved in some legal proceedings and precedents and, for several decades, has been advocating for more inclusive and race-conscious admissions policies and standards. These legal precedents and the tangible data for the importance of diversity provided evidence for outcomes around broad-scale engagement in teaching and learning at the institution.

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The appointment of a new president provided an opportunity for some of those earlier

ideas to “crystallize” around a centralized activation of DEI. The new president identified

priorities that addressed and engaged every facet of the campus and delivered the charge to

campus, making it clear diversity was an institutional priority. The deputy CDO stated having

visible and vocal leadership on campus was critical because it identified “diversity serves as that

critically important institutional resource for cultivating and building out our culture,” requiring

the engagement of the entire campus community.

During this time of presidential transition, the institution was experiencing campus protests that garnered media attention. The deputy CDO explained:

We had significant student unrest around the lack of representation—in particular, the

lack of representation of African American students on campus. So, I don’t know if you

recall the Twitter campaign [a few years ago], . . . [it] garnered national attention. And so,

you know, some climate issues were, you know, put out there before [the president].”

Institutional leaders realized they needed to be responsive as an institution and what might be

seen as a critical period provided an opportunity for the institution to proactively address and

infuse diversity, equity, and inclusion into the campus and learning environment.

Resources

At Institution B, human, financial, and technical resources were needed to advance DEI

work. These resources were guided by strategic planning documents and included staffing,

funding, direct campus initiatives, and products around teaching and learning. The deputy CDO

recounted:

I don’t know another institution that is engaging in this simultaneous activation of the

centralized and decentralized at the scale that we are engaging at [here]. . . . So, it’s kind

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of a one of a kind of, you know, one of a kind initiative within higher education at this

moment. So, you know, [the president] has been very, you know, very supportive. Our

chief diversity officer sits in [their] cabinet, so [they] are a part of the president’s cabinet.

So, again, with the idea that D [diversity] and I [inclusion] is not a part or on the

periphery, but it’s an integral—should be an integral—consideration in everything that

we do.

This level of simultaneous activation requires dedicated resources for products, processes, and

people.

The office was established under the leadership of the executive-level CDO for diversity,

equity, and inclusion, who has a large human resource pool under their auspice. This office has a

complex and extensive structure that oversees all aspects of diversity and inclusion across the

campus. Reporting to the executive-level CDO are several assistant vice provosts, a deputy

CDO, and unit directors. The assistant vice provosts oversee equity and inclusion relating to

research, accreditation, and faculty initiatives in academic affairs. The unit directors oversee

programmatic efforts, educational outreach to faculty, multicultural academic initiatives, and high school outreach programs. The deputy CDO who participated in this study was responsible

for the day-to-day support of the diversity strategic plan. There are also several executive

assistants, business and financial directors, research analysts, and program managers, and a

multimedia, marketing, and communications manager. Each of the unit directors had a complete

staff and office of which they oversaw. In addition, there are professional staff responsible for

integrating DEI into schools, colleges, and unit levels.

Reporting structures assist in identifying and obtaining resources. Having the executive-

level CDO situated in the broader funding structure ensured DEI was embedded in everything

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that received funding across the institution and DEI projects and initiatives received funding. The

DEI budget at this institution was comparable to other entities with broad institutional missions

and included significant funding for future projects. In addition, the president committed significant funding to the office’s initiatives and the DEI strategic plan. The president’s funding

commitment signified the importance of the work, the impact on the campus culture, and the

ability to have specific staff positions whose responsibility were to implement strategies and

analyze effectiveness of initiatives. The deputy CDO stated:

We are incredibly fortunate in that we have leadership and our president and our

[executive-level] chief diversity officer who provide the requisite human, technical, and

financial resources for us within our unit to not only, you know, develop those supports,

and, you know, and implement our strategy across all across campus, but to support the

broader initiative across campus.

The deputy CDO was transparent in how funds were used. When asked about

comparisons to other campus entities, they explained:

Just as an institution would devote these types of resources to any other initiative, DEI

should be no exception. So, you know, when we’re engaging in new, you know,

[information technology], or communication-types of support in the campus community,

there is never a blink around the need for bodies to move the work.

When asked if funding was commensurate with other initiatives on campus, the deputy

CDO felt it was and stated the work could be scalable for other campuses whose resource

allocation is not at the level of their institution. However, having an impressive resource base

helped to “move the needle on the work.” While it may seem this campus had a large amount of

staffing and funding compared to other entities and efforts, the deputy CDO shared, “having the

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leadership and point people in place is what gets the work accomplished.” The deputy CDO

expressed having visible and vocal leaders for DEI initiatives improved funding support and allowed the community to see the impact. Not only did these leaders help to advance DEI work,

they also spoke to the importance of DEI in the organizational culture. According to the CDO,

having the president champion DEI and the executive-level CDO structured in the president’s

cabinet provided access to human, financial, and technical resources. The deputy CDO stated,

“Leadership support is number one and critical component to the work and being effective on

campus.” Dedicated resources from institutional leaders are needed to embed DEI into the

institutional culture.

Stakeholders

For this deputy CDO, stakeholders must join in the efforts for the CDO’s DEI work to be

embedded in the institution and bridging research and practice is believed to be integral to

reaching all stakeholders. Overall, the deputy CDO felt campus stakeholders understood their

office was incredibly busy trying to reach all aspects of the institution, and the president has been

an outspoken proponent and champion of them and DEI work.

The deputy CDO developed relationships with the organizational training unit on campus

to integrate DEI into faculty, staff, and student training and the central research, teaching, and

learning office, so they could assist in DEI efforts when training on inclusive teaching practices.

The staff in the [executive-level] CDO office are valued and respected by faculty and staff

constituents of whom support the office and the work they are trying to accomplish. These

stakeholders understand the complexity and nuanced nature of DEI work and ensure support by

helping them navigate campus partners and systems. The deputy CDO stated stakeholders

appreciate, understand, and support the expertise required of the office and the work.

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According to the deputy CDO, campus stakeholders know about the DEI work, see the

activities taking place, know they are receiving funding for DEI initiatives, and are aware of the

integrated plans for improvement and growth. There is also an understanding that more work

needs to be done on specific initiatives and when communicating with campus constituents,

stakeholders, and future students, alumni, and community members. The deputy CDO shared they communicate with stakeholders through an annual progress report. This report provides status updates on DEI plans and progress toward the 5-year strategic plan. Additionally, there is a summit and retreat on diversity each year, where the executive-level CDO and campus president provide further insight from the report and “transparency across the process” to external audiences.

The deputy CDO acknowledged more work needs to be done on communicating and engaging with the students and alumni. There was no misconception students were often the hardest constituency to buy into DEI because of the transient nature of their experiences.

Communicating with students about the importance of the DEI work and where they can contribute continued to be a challenge. As students become alumni and perhaps become disengaged from their experience and the institution, it is harder to keep them updated and integrated in the work. The deputy CDO developed a communications team to build relationships and provide communication around DEI initiatives via a website and social media outlets.

Conclusion

At this institution, DEI work has been central and necessary for decades. Campus and national headlines pushed diversity efforts to the forefront several times; however, a “perfect storm” of occurrences led DEI to where it is now. For this campus, the previous president’s visible and vocal leadership was the missing component that was critical for the advancement of

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DEI work. The understanding and proactive nature of the new campus president helped deliver

change in the community. In addition to DEI support from the highest level of leadership,

consistent messaging around the importance of DEI and the work was required to achieve

outcomes.

The importance of support from executive and presidential leaders was communicated

throughout this interview. Institutional leaders needed to buy-into DEI, personally value it, and then communicate that value to the broader campus community through institutional directives.

If leadership is not supportive—either by silence or protest—then it undermines the work of the

[executive-level] CDO office and its progress. Support from the top trickles down, not just into human, financial, and capital resources, but also into buy-in and collaboration, and it needs to be folded into institutional commitment. During this interview, the deputy CDO reported their president had committed a significant amount of money to DEI initiatives because the president understood doing so would demonstrate commitment to the value and impact of DEI work.

Staying ahead of the shifting dynamics outside of the institution while being reactive to the dynamics happening within the institution can be both reactive and proactive. A large component of how the work gets completed is through policies, practices, and procedures that are incorporated and communicated via leadership. The importance of diversity was communicated to the campus and community through their institutional DEI progress reports, campus plan trackers, and annual diversity summit. This was important because institutional leadership determined transparency was important. This leadership communicated from the institutional leadership that DEI was not the responsibility of one office or entity, but the responsibility of every member of campus.

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Institution C

Institution C is a public, research, land-grant institution located in the great plains and situated in a small city. Founded in the late-1800s, the institution enrolls approximately 35,000 undergraduate students. It was difficult to find a breakdown of student diversity on the campus’s website; however, data from 2018 were available on a college comparison website. Of the undergraduate students enrolled in 2018, 67% were White, 7.5% were Hispanic or Latino, 5% were Black or African American, 5% were American Indian or Alaska Native, and less than 1% were Asian and Native Pacific Islander. Of their undergraduate student enrollment, 53% received some kind of need-based financial assistance.

According to a New York Times profile of their students, the average median family income of a student was $104,900 and 47% come from the top 20%, 4.4% of student families made less than $20,000 or less per year, and 2.5% of student families made $630,000 or more a year. More than 19% of their students moved up two or more income quintiles as an adult from their family income, and 2% of their students came from a poor family to become a rich adult.

The median income of their students at age 34 was $45,800.

The institution supports a broad kaleidoscope of students who represent the world in which they live. The institution has a comprehensive diversity office website that includes staff profiles, a mission statement, a vision statement, upcoming events, and diversity documents.

CDO Role Creation

The CDO role emerged from long conversations on diversity and a need for having someone who could provide input at the senior level. The position was created in the mid-1990s as an associate vice president of multicultural change and was part of the president’s cabinet. In the early 2000s, the president at the time created a division of institutional diversity and

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promoted the position to a vice president and CDO. Today, the role of the executive-level CDO is to (a) provide administrative advice to the president and the administration, including vice presidents, deans, and academic chairs; (b) facilitate welcoming environments; (c) deliver action and align the mission by providing opportunities for the institution to create, contribute to, and succeed at serving traditionally underrepresented and underserved faculty, staff, and student populations; (d) serve and integrate the community (i.e., not segment portions of the populations); (e) serve as a resource for the entire campus; (f) engage with faculty and staff on curriculum; and (g) engage with students on programming. The CDO explained:

My goal is to provide administrative advice to the president, administration, academic

deans, VPs across the campus to help facilitate environments that are open, welcoming,

accommodating, and expect them to have every member of the institution, including

visitors and alumni.

The CDO is to constantly assess the current state of the institution and appropriately use

resources to advance the work. An additional role is educating appropriate constituents and

stakeholders, so that when funds or resources are requested, it makes sense to everyone. The

CDO must thoroughly consider how to bring forth both diversity related needs and campus

issues. The biggest charge of the role was creating a campus environment where conversations

around diversity could exist without siloing or silencing individuals. That is the responsibility of

the CDO is to assist the campus in creating those opportunities for inclusion and welcoming

campus.

Organizational Structure

The position started as an associate vice president and, following some organizational

changes and external pressures, a new president promoted two associates to vice president roles.

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The vice presidents then became part of the president’s cabinet. The cabinet members report directly to the president whom they meet with one-on-one regularly. According to the CDO, the president is rather noninterventionist, trusts the cabinet to do their jobs, and allows them the agency to do them. Because the CDO has an executive-level role, their department is considered an executive-level division.

Within the division’s structure are two executives: an associate vice president and an assistant vice president. There are also approximately 20 full-time positions. The division includes a newly created office of multicultural affairs that houses affinity-based student groups, diversity academic support, and four Department of Education TRIO programs. Recently, one of their roles—the director of equal opportunity—was transitioned to human resources. That position oversaw harassment investigations, affirmative action plans, diversity education plans, and a Title IX officer. Once separated from the DEI office, both offices were able to thrive.

According to the CDO, the division had to be able to survive changing times and adapt to what was going on around them; they had to change course and direction. They said, “Structures have to be in place and have to be embedded.”

The CDO stated, support of the institution is important for getting the work done and moving things forward: “The org chart doesn’t have to look that way . . . when you have a president who gets it and understands it.” The “it” refers to communicating to internal and external constituents (especially internal constituents) that DEI is part of the institution and there is pride in supporting DEI efforts. Roles, reporting lines, resources, and a comprehensive structure communicated the importance and authority of the CDO in the institution.

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Campus Environment

At Institution C, there is an intentional effort to create an environment that is welcoming

and inclusive to all, both inside and outside the institution. There is an intentional effort to foster

inclusion for all students, not just affinity groups, by creating an environment where students can

be welcomed into anything they find interesting or engaging (e.g., in athletics, clubs and organizations, and residence life). The CDO shared their office helps the campus create a sense

of place for every student. One of the ways in which they accomplish this goal is by helping

others understand not every student wants to join a cultural affinity group; they might want to do something different (e.g., join athletics, chess, nutrition, debate) and, no matter what they choose, they should have that opportunity and feel welcome doing so.

In terms of policies, campus leaders added a nondiscrimination statement in the 1990s that was focused on gender and sexual orientation before it was widely known and practiced.

Since the late-2000s, the institution has required a diversity course for every undergraduate major and students must earn at least a D- in their designated course.

The institution views itself as having a responsibility to professionally and personally develop students and prepare them to enter a socially and culturally diverse world. Development is achieved by layering program and curriculum opportunities, so they do not exhaust certain messages; however, students engage with messages at different touchpoints and experiences. The

CDO stated, “A lot of it wasn’t whether it was intentional or unintentional, it was just happening.” Whether the institution was cognizant of including certain changes, their campus population looked and included many different people, so policies were created to be inclusive of that diversity; however, with policy changes, it is also important to ask who they represent and serve, which, at the time, was not the norm in higher education. The CDO stated:

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We’re just very fortunate to have had the leadership that we’ve had over the years and, in

some ways, just the idea of get a glimpse of, and element of, life and family. That’s

important to include . . . into policies.

The CDO recognized their institution’s policies and practices will not touch everyone nor solve everything, but they will continue to try. There was also a commitment to continue advancing

DEI work throughout their community in addition to their campus.

Resources

Similar to other CDOs, the CDO at Institution C stated they could benefit from having a bigger budget substantial enough to achieve the work they wanted to do. Institutional funding for

DEI programs has existed for over 25 years and private funding from outside of the campus has existed for over 15 years. According to the CDO, the DEI budget is smaller than other departments; however, it is also the smallest executive-level position. The CDO is a responsible steward of resources and strives to efficiently garner the greatest amount of impact.

The department is spread out across the campus in three buildings and coupled with offices doing similar work. For example, the multicultural office is housed near the international office, study abroad, and campus life, in an effort to integrate the work. The space has been recently remodeled and is located in a heavily trafficked location to intentionally promote interaction and engagement. The other offices are located in the student union. Down the street is the CDO’s office, which is located in an administration building. By placing the offices in spaces in which students and constituents gather, engagement and conversations occur daily, which has helped ensure DEI is included in aspects of student life.

There are two executive-level positions and approximately 20 staff in the DEI division.

There is an office of multicultural affairs with coordinators for affinity groups. There is a

115 diversity-based academic support program that is privately funded. There are four Department of

Education TRIO programs (i.e., first generation, low income, McNair, and upward bound Lewis alliance), which have existed for more than 2 decades and have numerous federal grants. There are also programs to increase the numbers of underrepresented minorities in STEM fields, including an externally funded 2-year graduate STEM work, and the department has access to doctoral student scholars and alliances around the country to provide much-needed assistance.

According to the CDO, building relationships with different entities allows for the sharing of institutional resources for the betterment of the entire institution, especially for programming and outreach. Some great programs and efforts bring resources (e.g., endowed scholarships and grants) to campus; however, they require processes and people to manage them.

While there are resources to do the work, having additional funding would make the work more efficient.

Stakeholders

At this institution, the CDO serves the whole community—students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the local community. There is a responsibility to integrate all diversity work into all the aspects of the institution. The CDO stated:

What I tell people is that, you know, around diversity and inclusion, we don’t want to

“own it.” And we shouldn’t, because I can’t be successful as an institution if somebody

has a monopoly, and certainly with respect to diversity and inclusion. External

community engagement too. Working with faculty and staff, looks at recruiting and

staffing, training, and speaking in the classes about a variety of topics, and doing research

on the topics of DEI. Lots opportunities to engage with stakeholders, and there is a broad

range of stakeholders. Working with faculty and staff to integrate diversity into the

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curriculum and engaging students. Also working with them and having conversations to

broaden their individual perspectives. There is a diversity advisory board that started as

affirmative action in the 70s.

The CDO saw their job as helping the institution to effectively move forward. The CDO stated that while they often interacted with people who did not agree with them or the work, they

still saw them as working to move the institution forward and progress. Additionally, it was

important to the CDO that their opponents and the entire community sees results of DEI efforts

for underrepresented, underserved, and majority communities and continue to support them. For

this CDO, a culture of inclusion and commitment is part of creating a community of excellence.

The CDO also saw their role as increasing diversity at all leadership levels and making sure the

cabinet was included in the leadership structure of the institution.

When working with stakeholders, leadership matters, especially leaders who understand

and value diversity. The CDO stated, “[The president] said, ‘I want to look out my window and

see a kaleidoscope, because that’s the world our students are going out into.’” For this CDO, this

comment from the president signaled a “green light” to go forth and do the work; the president

put words into action.

Conclusion

The CDO’s website celebrates numerous DEI campus, local, and national accolades. Not

only are they proud of the DEI work on their campus and the campus engagement around DEI,

they have garnered attention from peer institutions and national professional associations. The

CDO was very serious about championing DEI and social justice. For example, they expressed

having addressed incidents in their athletics program by creating a DEI sub-committee

comprised of student athletes, staff, coaches, and alumni.

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Now a common place structure, the CDO office at Institution C was separated organizationally, and some staff and functions (e.g., equal opportunity) were transferred to human resources, which the CDO believed allowed both units to stay ahead of the curve in both areas. According to the CDO, their structure works for this campus and has garnered recognition in and out of the state. The CDO collaborates with other institutions in their conference to talk about diversity best practices. The campus considers its model a comprehensive DEI structure, which includes placing value on engaging local communities. The belief at the institution is, students who are exposed to DEI on campus will take that knowledge back to their communities, creating a rippling impact. One of the ways they hope to achieve this goal is requiring all incoming freshman undergraduate students to take a diversity and international course. Another example of campus integration was having their police department participate in an inclusive excellence certification program. These campus partnerships were an important starting place for whole campus integration.

The CDO explained that a testament to the DEI work was reflected in institutional data and awards they received. They cited statistics like increasing the number of diverse students graduating by 100%, the increased acceptance rates of minority graduate students, the growing total enrollment in students of color, the 80% increase of faculty of color, and their over 70 diversity-related clubs, groups, and organizations for students, faculty, and staff. The CDO was also proud of the many national awards and recognition received from the NCAA, the academic institution, the department of education, and professional higher education associations. They believed that the awards were telling of the evidence of the DEI work they [CDO office] were doing on their campus. There is a dedicated space in the student union dedicated to their inclusive excellence awards. The CDO reflected on the awards and stated, “The awards don’t say

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our numbers are higher than anyone else’s, but they say collectively as an institution you’re

doing some things that are different that sets you apart from the others.” According to the CDO,

students, faculty, and staff testimonials about the institution also provided evidence for the value

of creating a culture and community of excellence around diversity. The CDO saw the accolades as a reflection of the campus environment they wanted to create, where students of all different racial, ethnic, and sexual identities and life experiences could come together to learn, interact, and appreciate one another.

Institution D

Institution D is a public, research, land-grant institution located on the east coast and situated in a rural college town. Founded in the late-1800s, the institution enrolls approximately

32,000 students. Their website included demographics of their student data, which indicated

36.7% of their undergraduate student population are minority. Of their enrolled undergraduates, approximately 58% are White, 11% are Asian, 10% are Latino, and 5.9% are Black. They provide a cohort composite of their students, noting 18% of their 2012 cohort were recipients of federal Pell grants.

According to a New York Times profile on their students, the average median family income was $119,700 and 55% come from the top 20%. Only 3.5% of student families made less than $20,000 or less per year and 2.1% of student families made $630,000 or more a year. More than 15% of their students moved up two or more income quintiles as an adult from their family income, and 1.7% of their students came from a poor family to become a rich adult. The median income of a student at age 34 was $56,700.

To develop an inclusive community for instruction and research, the institution promotes a vibrant and diverse environment of different cultural perspectives, values, and experiences. The

119 institution has a comprehensive diversity office website that includes staff profiles, a mission statement, a vision statement, upcoming events, and diversity documents. In early 2000, a task force analyzed the necessary steps to advance the institution’s mission and enhance the diversity of faculty, staff, and students. The diversity report, and the subsequent reports that followed over the next 10 years, led to the development of a diversity task force. The task force was composed of students, faculty, and staff dedicated to deepening and improving the campus commitment to diversity. The task force generated a report outlining clear action steps to achieve their mission of expanding enrollment of racial and ethnic minority students. The task force based their recommendations on academic literature and peer institutions’ best practices and determined that for consistent and sustained investment and accountability to equity goals, a senior leadership position reporting in line to the president was required.

CDO Role Creation

The CDO role at Institution D was established following recommendations from the task force on diversity. The creation of the CDO role came about very recently—about 4 years prior to this interview. At the time of the interview, the inaugural CDO had been in the position for 1.5 years. The CDO, who had previous corporate diversity experience, also held an associate vice president title. There was previously a vice provost for diversity who was a faculty member, a tenured faculty member from history, and prior to that, there was an office of multicultural and international affairs, which was also led by a faculty member from the sociology department.

The CDO at Institution D was expected to (a) build integrated and effective resources

(e.g., a website) that integrated with campus media, (b) oversee a programming budget, (c) oversee staff including an assistant director and a programming director, and (d) be actively involved with the campus’ diversity council. The CDO was not responsible for working with

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human resources on affirmative action and conduct, as these responsibilities were under the

purview of another unit. The CDO served to shepherd the diversity work at the institution. The

task force report identified the institution needed to improve faculty and staff retention and build

upon student diversity initiatives. The report identified a CDO position needed to work with

various campus stakeholders to build upon and implement plans for campus diversity. The CDO

mentioned the taskforce report recommended (a) comprehensive integration of this role into all

aspects of the institution from student life to hiring, procurement, fundraising, and alumni and

(b) the name be changed to limit confusion when comparing it to the role of human resources

diversity and equity. The CDO described their position as a real “soup to nuts” type of position.

Their role was to craft the plan, deliver it, and champion it. The CDO sometimes felt the institution’s leadership was not aligned—everyone had defined DEI for themselves but had not

communicated those definitions to the greater campus or contributed to a universal conversation.

The CDO expressed that a diversity plan was something that was created and put on a shelf

somewhere. The creation of the CDO role was an opportunity to create a campus definition and

align DEI institutionally.

Organizational Structure

At the time of the interview, the CDO reported to the president of the institution and sat

on the president’s cabinet along with the other institutional executives and subject matter experts.

By reporting directly to the president, the CDO felt included and was able to work along with

other senior leaders to ensure diversity and inclusion were a comprehensive part of the campus

climate. Additionally, this reporting structure prompted the inaugural CDO to feel supported in

establishing their unit to provide centralized and comprehensive diversity and inclusion support

to the university.

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According to the institution’s organizational chart, the CDO supervised an executive

assistant, an assistant vice president, a director, and the directors of multiple identity-based cultural centers. The cultural centers were repositioned under the CDO and some of those structural changes were not welcomed by students or staff. The CDO explained they relied upon the directors in the cultural centers to know and share what was happening on campus.

Additionally, the CDO depended on the directors to handle the day-to-day operations, so the

CDO could advocate for them.

The CDO’s department was housed outside of both student affairs and academic affairs.

Prior to the creation of the CDO role, there was a separation of compliance, affirmative action and equal employment opportunity functions, which were assigned to an institutional equity office; however, the CDO stated they often work together on matters affecting discrimination, bias, and equity and help to see issues across the campus, which align to similar processes under student affairs.

According to the CDO, rather than seeing the various restructures as an alignment of resources, students felt the institution was taking away “something” from them like their cultural centers or resource centers. The CDO also stated students did not understand their role—they wanted them to be a representative and be present and publicly speak up for their issues; the

CDO expressed those responsibilities did not align with their institutional directive.

Campus Environment

Institution D has multiple locations (i.e., it is part of a multi-campus system) and was trying to create an environment of inclusivity across all of them. Prior to the CDO’s appointment, the campus experienced several polarizing incidents leading up to and after the

2016 election. The hope was that proactively hiring a CDO to lead diversity and inclusion work

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on campus would mitigate future campus turmoil and attacks from outside groups that other

institutions seemed to face.

As many other campuses were dealing with campus turmoil and attacks from outside

groups, this institution was not yet experiencing those issues; however, because of the push to

get ahead of any incidents before they occurred, they sought to mitigate them. Some incidents were more direct. For example, the campus invited an incendiary speaker come to campus,

which stirred some division among the campus community. The CDO stated the were not

previously informed of the event or consulted on the response afterward. Reflecting on why, the

CDO stated:

There is a cabinet and we do not meet frequently on a regular basis. So, there is what

people consider to be a “kitchen cabinet” that has, you know the CFO and . . . the

provost, and not some of the more ancillary folks. So, you know, when they talk about

“who is communicated to” and “who learned what,” that sort of thing, I’m not in that

mix.

The disconnect in communication created an incident that could have been avoided had

the CDO been looped into the conversation from the beginning. Students felt the administration

was not doing enough after the event and that responsibilities for creating DEI environments across the institution were being passed off to the CDO. For example, several of the president’s comments did not address the moment or speak to the students. Rather than rebuke the speaker’s comments within the context of creating a welcoming environment, the president only addressed

the students who were upset. The students believed the communications were and should have

come from the CDO; however, by doing so, the CDO would have stepped out of the

organizational bounds. They stated:

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The students felt like the focus of that statement was on who was upset as opposed to

addressing the harm that had been to the communities who felt like they had been

violated in their own home. . . . But again, the students didn’t understand that that’s not

my role. So, I don’t come behind the President and say “Well, that’s all well and good but

what I really think is. . . .” It just doesn’t work that way.

The students wanted the CDO to speak up for them and did not understand how the president was still the spokesperson for the campus on DEI issues.

Stakeholders

The taskforce report discussed how the diversity council needed someone to work on diversity related initiatives for students, employees, and the greater community. Considering these stakeholders, the CDO had the directive of working with various schools and colleges to create individualized diversity plans. Using a consultative approach, the CDO would assist with rolling out initiatives across and within different schools and departments and helping them identify and meet diversity targets.

As previously mentioned, the cultural centers were repositioned under the CDO and some of those structural pieces were not welcomed by students and staff, of which were also stakeholders. The student stakeholders wanted the CDO to represent them and speak up for their issues. With the creation of the CDO role and the reorganization of staff under their purview, some staff members felt a loss of autonomy and a loss of being voice of diversity on campus, which caused a rift among some of the campus stakeholders.

Other stakeholders stemmed from responsibilities like identifying and mitigating attrition of faculty and staff of color, supporting education and training programs, connecting with alumni affinity groups, and acquiring diversity related grants and funding.

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Resources

The CDO was allocated several staff and faced interesting challenges. For example, the

CDO wanted to repurpose staff to better suit the division’s needs; however, due to institutional

policies and practices, it was difficult to do so. The CDO was also given authority to hire

individuals with experience in academic diversity, which allowed them to initiate some programs

right away. There were also discussions about hiring another staff member in the CDO office to

lead training and consultation work with departments and schools.

While the CDO stated they would have enjoyed more funding, they were satisfied;

financial resources were not a barrier. The CDO’s budget included a departmental budget, the

budgets of the cultural centers, and other funds allocated from student fees for programming. The

CDO’s retrofitted office was in an administrative-heavy building, off the beaten path, and not directly accessible to students.

The CDO was asked to enact real impact but found the challenge difficult due to the absence of resources and dedicated support systems, especially in the expected time frame given.

The CDO anticipated engaging in a fact finding mission in the first year to better understand institutional needs and how they could impact all of the institutional units (i.e., the various campuses, stakeholders like students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and academic entities) with particular emphasis on bringing together operational structures and goals that previously existed in silos. Challenges derived from a lack of resources and structural support from leadership.

Administrative departments and units were also homogenous and primarily male, each with their distinct visions and objectives, which proved difficult to garner buy in for a unified diversity vision.

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The CDO, who had corporate experience, was also faced with challenges relating to

staffing and working with people who did not want to leave their positions in a higher education

setting. Reassigning staff and responsibilities proved challenging for the CDO and they found it difficult to put a team together without negotiable staffing resources. Similarly, the CDO faced difficulty supporting staff’s career advancement and belonging because of the union environment. They expressed seeing staff move to the private sector because they could more easily maneuver, grow, and advance.

Conclusion

The interesting component of this case was the transition of the CDO from the corporate world to academia. This comparison served as a major distinction of this CDO’s position. The

CDO mentioned the real distinction came from the level of senior leadership support and direction. In a corporate environment, C-suite leaders are seen as subject matter experts and chief executive officers, or presidents tend to not interfere. Having a president and leader who understands the CDO’s mission and vision is important and demonstrated to the rest of the institution how the CDO and their role should be viewed. The CDO explained, “I think that a lot of the research thus far has demonstrated a real best practice in the connection or support from the leadership at the institution.” Having a consultative approach to the work and getting everyone to buy-in would pull together their efforts, especially because the work was so spread out and disjointed.

There was also a difference in the positional power between the corporate CDO and

academic CDO. The CDO’s corporate diversity experience both helped and hindered their position. On the one hand, their corporate experience allowed the CDO to have knowledge, understanding, and a framework to found the office. However, there were also marked

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differences in senior-level support, the levels of buy-in needed to be successful in an academic

environment, and having the authority of a subject matter expert and the autonomy to coordinate

initiatives. Power structure and governance has proved to be quite challenging for this CDO. In

addition, the CDO experienced less connections with peers in an academic setting verses a

corporate setting. They said, “In higher ed, I feel like folks felt like it was just another seat

around the table as opposed to someone who they could really partner with across all of its

different functions.” This distinction in the positional power was important. They went on to

state a further distinction from corporate CDO to higher edu CDO:

Why that made a difference is that we [at the corporate level] had the ability to sort of

trickle down as well as learn from all of the challenges of the different business units, but

were able to really integrate diversity and inclusion in the work of the different business

units and because the president was the, and in addition to the CEO, it was almost like the

CEO was the champion and the president was the lead, he modeled the way in terms of

execution.

In the corporate setting, the President served as the figurehead and considered those in the C-

suite to be subject matter experts. Being able to report to the president was very important in the

corporate world because it allowed the issues to be championed at the top.

The final distinction was being seen as the subject-matter expert. The CDO recalled,

“There are some things that, in spite of being the best chief diversity officer I was, that I simply

could not do.” They faced difficulties redistributing workloads and responsibilities, and in

supervising staff who did not want to take on new roles. Because of their corporate experience,

the CDO was the only “true” subject matter expert in the office, which meant a lot of the

training, workshops, and presentations fell to the CDO to cultivate and lead; however, being new

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to the role and campus and not having the knowledge required to successfully navigate systems

contributed to other difficulties they faced. The CDO was able to create a diversity council with representatives from units and colleges that helped spread diversity work and intentionally

provide diversity opportunities and knowledge.

Interview Themes

Through the interviews, the CDO role and structure of each of the four institutions began to form. While I gathered individual perspectives of the CDOs, I also began identifying common themes across the four cases. In a constructivist paradigm, the investigator uses the participants’

interviews to develop a composite understanding of the phenomenon. According to Avenier

(2010), using a constructivist paradigm recognizes organizations are inanimate creations by

intelligent humans, so the paradigm allows for humans to speak for the organizational design.

This was the assumption used throughout the coding process, that individuals who occupy the

role are speaking on behalf of the role and their experiences as the individual occupying the

CDO role.

Themes

I coded each interview separately with line-by-line coding, then compiled all the themes into a concept map, which formed into overarching themes. Stake (2006) explained in analysis,

the themes from individual cases should be sorted into overall coordinated themes across all

cases. While individual case codes may be lost to the collective analysis of the research question

during this reductive process, each code speaks to how it contributes to the overall result. The

following three overarching themes emerged from the data: leadership, resources, and doing

diversity work. Below is a description of each theme and subtheme that emerged across to the

four cases. By connecting these four cases, a more holistic picture of the CDO surfaced and an

128 understanding of how their role and the work happens on campus and their relationship to organizational legitimacy was made known. These themes also provide an understanding of the shared experience of CDOs in higher education.

Theme 1: Leadership

A major theme across all four cases was leadership. Research from Kezar (2007, 2012) provided a foundation for understanding the role of college and university leadership, particularly that of the college president in supporting DEI. Critical to organizational change and progress was to embedding diversity plans into the fabric of the organization through collaborative institutional leadership (Ahmed, 2012; Stanley et al., 2019). Diversity, equity, and inclusion plans are integrated through strategic leadership, commitment, and resources provided by the president and provost working in collaboration with senior leadership and bolstered by the

CDO to hold unit leaders accountable for progress (Ahmed, 2012; Stanley, 2016; Stanley et. al.,

2019; Williams, 2013).

Furthermore, Stanley (2016) asserted that a university’s diversity culture is rarely examined when a CDO provides strategic leadership for diversity and inclusion efforts. Again, I asked the question, while the research supports the importance of visible and vocal senior leadership, especially the president, in institutionalizing diversity efforts, does this same visible and vocal support extend in providing legitimacy to the CDO role? I found that all participants referenced leadership as important to the work of a CDO. For all participants, senior leadership support was critical. Institutions without the support of leadership did not integrate DEI in institutional efforts or view the CDO or diversity efforts as priorities. Three types of leadership emerged from this theme: (a) Executive Leadership, (b) Senior Leadership, and (c) Shepherding.

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Subtheme 1.1: Executive Leadership. The subtheme, Executive Leadership, emerged in all of the interviews, mainly about the president of the university. Executive leadership was found to either hinder or expand the diversity work of CDOs, and presidential support was identified as the “number one factor” of success. CDOs, who perceived their president supported diversity work, spoke about the importance of diversity. For example, one CDO stated:

Leadership support is the number one factor regarding . . . whether in the DI initiative is

going to be successful or not—and leadership at the highest level. So, this, these

initiatives must be, you know, top of mind for leadership because leadership has to be

visible and vocal—namely the president of an institution of higher ed institution visible

and vocal—around the importance of this work, the need for this work, and, you know,

consistent with messaging around D&I or diversity, equity, and inclusion not being at the

periphery.

All participants acknowledged executive leaders could make or break their efforts to impact and influence diversity work. Support from executive leaders is vital to having an integrated, comprehensive, and supported [DEI] plan because they not only provide resources, they provide direction and creditability for the work, which was supported by the literature.

CDOs who felt executive leaders who were not as invested expressed having to work harder to implement diversity work and impact campus. Supporting Stanley et. al.’s (2019) assertion that integrated institutional leadership was needed for comprehensive change, the CDOs interviewed believed committed leaders are those who push a campus to be engaged in diversity work from the top all the way down to the students.

It was also important for leadership to have cultural competency and track record of diversity. It was not just enough that a president happens to value advancing diversity initiatives,

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it was critical that they were intentionally selected for their commitment, understood their role as

president in advancing the work, and then selecting senior administrators who also were

committed to the integrated thinking (Ahmed, 2012). While all four CDO positions were created

out of various “diversity reports” the success of the CDO was helped or hindered by the value

the president placed on diversity. Several of the CDO’s mentioned that their president “gets it,”

“understands importance of diversity,” and can identify “the world that students are going out

into.” The CDO for Institution A said, “executive leadership makes a tremendous difference” and explicit and external commitments to diversity gets people to show up and has a tremendous impact on the work.

Additionally, CDOs who did not feel as supported felt the role lacked credibility on their campus. The CDO from Institution D felt they could have been helped if their president had championed their role as CDO and their ideas, but said “It hurt their social creditability . . . because they felt like they had to build it [credibility] while doing the work.” The CDO reiterated the campus president is seen as the mouthpiece of the university and by aligning on diversity objectives, they could have created buy-in for the CDO and their initiatives. The CDO reflected:

it is hey just keep the students quite, make sure they don’t protest, we don’t want another

Mizzou here, um, and I think that’s unfortunate without really bringing the individual to

support this work, to the table, like legitimately having a seat at the table, not just being

in the room so to speak, and I was going to say being invited to the party but not being

asked to dance. . . You know you have a lot to offer and you have value to contribute but

yet it’s not being leveraged because some of the folks don’t see the possibility around

what would happen if we really valued diversity and inclusion.

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According to the CDO, if campus leadership does not outwardly support the CDO or diversity

initiatives, they will fall “flat.” This was reflective of Cole and Harper’s (2017) research that

discussed the importance of a president’s statements during racial incidents on campus. They

found that presidential words and statements matter because they often reinforce the private sentiments of the institution publicly. It was not just necessary for the president to publicly

support DEI, they needed to also publicly support the role of CDO. Authentic and vocal public

support could seek to advance the legitimacy and credibility with the internal environment. Not

only was public support conveyed through public statements, but also through organizational

reporting lines.

Reporting lines to executive leaders were also found to be important in this study.

Structuring a CDO as a senior leader, with direct line to the president increased the ability to

directly impact and legitimacy to diversity initiatives (Ahmed, 2012; Harvey, 2014; Leon, 2014;

Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). CDOs who directly reported to the president could better

advocate for diversity initiatives and were more likely to have their efforts holistically integrated

across the campus. The CDO at Institution B mentioned the importance of the CDO having a

direct report line to the president because, “there may be times where there is outstanding

leadership who champions DEI, or leadership who leaves it alone. Embedded CDO give

consistency that is needed to create a culture of DEI.” The reporting lines also allowed the

president to direct resources and collaborations among cabinet members. CDOs who had an

indirect reporting line often felt a lower level of support, and “they did not meet regularly with

their president unless there was a campus issue or concern.” Elevating the CDO reporting lines

garnered the CDO more organizational legitimacy by putting them in direct contact with other

senior administrative leaders.

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Subtheme 1.2: Senior Leadership. Relationships with other senior executive leaders— especially members of the president’s cabinet or SLT—were also important to CDOs. Serving as member of the president’s SLT allows the CDO to be involved in crafting public statements and institutional responses (Cole & Harper, 2017), informs policies and practices (Ahmed, 2012), and allows them to help identify organizational priorities and leadership (Kezar et al., 2020). The

CDO from Institution B echoed the level of significance for these positions to be situated in senior leadership teams. They said:

They are positions that are situated as the vice provost or vice president level. Yeah. So,

you know, in terms of higher levels of authority and leadership within the institution. And

so that's a good thing. And that signal to me that more and more institutions are saying,

not only the importance, but the benefit of engaging getting out in front of and engaging

this work to build out the climate that we hope to hope to live, work, learn and lead.

It provides access and collaboration with other senior-cabinet members, typically executive-level or senior administrators (e.g., a provost, senior vice presidents, and deans), responsible for overseeing significant initiatives over various campus units (e.g., informational technology, athletics, academics schools, finance, enrollment management; Worthington et al.,

2020). CDOs described the cabinet space as one where they can advocate for themselves and their cause behind closed doors. It also allowed them to engage in shared resource exchange and mutual interdependence for shared goals. There was a perception among three of the four CDOs that the executive cabinet should be and was a place for collaboration. This collaboration allowed them to integrate DEI into aspects of the institution like finance and budget, hiring and training practices, and student affairs.

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One CDO did not perceive themselves to be seen as one of the “kitchen cabinet”

members. They mentioned “I feel like folks felt like it was just another seat around the table as

opposed to someone who they could really partner with across all of its different functions. As

the CDOs stated:

So, there is a cabinet and we do not meet frequently on a regular basis. So, there is what

people consider to be a “kitchen cabinet” that has, you know, the [chief financial officer]

. . . the provost, and not some of the more ancillary folks. So, you know, when they talk

about who is communicated to and who learned what, that sort of thing, I’m not in that

mix.

Another CDO stated, “Not all members [of the cabinet] were created equal.” This reinforces

Aime et al.’s (2010) assumption that legitimacy can be distributed by the collective team and

raise the status and legitimacy of certain roles over others. This is important to understanding the

influence SLTs play in providing legitimacy to the CDO role, perhaps to both the external and

internal environment.

Even around a cabinet that is supposed to represent institutional issues and concerns equally, diversity is not always top of mind, particularly for underrepresented and minority

populations that want to know and feel they are being advocated for and represented at the

highest levels of leadership. Students, faculty, and staff want to be heard by individuals who

understand their voice and champion their causes. The CDO from institution D expressed, “So

you know are students necessarily seeing themselves in the classroom, you know leading in the

classroom, as leaders in administration, no. um, so I think it will take a different way of doing

business if you will for us to really live out our truth around being inclusive.” People within an

organization and the general public look for their representation within the administration and

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believe they will be served by a bureaucrat or administrator who values and represents their

interests (Pitts, 2005). They also believe it is important they see themselves represented in the

senior leadership. Smith (2015) discussed the vital importance of representative diversity within

the senior leadership team, and that it was not just vital for students, faculty, and staff to see

themselves reflected in the senior leadership but also the visible commitment to diversity. This is important for minority students as well because they want to know they have an advocate who is aware of the issues they face on and off campus, and not just that a person of color was hired in a performative act. One of the CDOs stated: “if your goal is just to be able to tell your board that you hired a CDO and its somebody with credentials enough that allows them to be like, oh yes yes yes, then maybe that works.” It is critically important that the institution see these CDO positions as included and represented themselves among the senior administration.

Subtheme 1.3: Shepherding. Another subtheme of leadership was shepherding, specifically the CDO as the “shepherd” of the diversity initiatives. In each case, the CDOs were viewed as the leader in all things diversity, whether out of necessity, position, or authority. They were the ones to create, implement, and manage diversity efforts. They were viewed to be “the

voice” of diversity for the institution. There was also mention of “serving as consultant” for

diversity work and working with others to engage them in the diversity work, mainly with

administration and executive leadership. The level of access to faculty and decision makers was

key in fulfilling this “consultant” approach and being able to provide guidance and insight to

individuals (i.e., hiring committees, faculty training, leadership cabinets, and deans, among

others); those making institutional decisions.

This serves to substantiate the work of Worthington et al. (2020) when they declared:

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Within that context, institutions that effectively advance EDI efforts must exhibit high

levels of commitment to the mission-driven imperative for inclusive excellence through

broad-based leadership, resources, evidence, and coordination . . . Cabinet-level diversity

officers play a critical leadership role in using their knowledge, expertise, and training to

work in collaboration with senior administrators, legal counsel, compliance officers, and

other regulatory compliance-based officials to maximize operational transparency and

minimize threats that influence the advancement of diversity and inclusion. (p. 9)

The clear mandate for the CDO is to span boundaries and diffuse understanding into practice.

Theme 2: Resources

Ahmed (2012) said a commitment is a pledge of future resources, citation, and repetition.

Without institutional authority or resources, DEI can become a performative statements and

empty words. For institutions, political will is the necessary effort an institution invests into put

action behind a situation to either break an institutional habit or reinforce an institutional

transformation. Allied to the literature from Smith (2015, 2020) and on importance of resources

for DEI, allidt e here were specific questions that were asked of each CDO about their resources, human, financial, and technical, as means to achieve the diversity objectives. More than just creating a CDO position, the gap in the literature identified that a CDO position would be equipped with the resources it needed to carry out initiatives and directives.

The CDO’s themselves recognized the importance of a CDO having dedicated resources

for DEI initiatives and the signal that it sends to the greater institution and community. CDO

from Institution A stated:

I mean, it’s just a matter of prioritizing it in the same way that we prioritize other things

that we deem as necessary and important. You know, if athletics is important, you’ll see

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the resources and the commitment there. If technology is important, you’ll see the

resources and commitment there. I think it’s just a matter of elevating diversity, equity,

inclusion to the level of importance that it deserves. And I understand that that happens in

an environment of competing interests and competing demands, but this is one that is

going to cost you in the long run if you do not pay attention to it seriously.

Based on the resources needed for accomplishing DEI work, specific questions were posed to each CDO about the resources they had at their disposal to carry out the institutions

DEI. While some CDO’s discussed physical office space that they acquired and used, the importance of physical space did not arise as a major subtheme. Each CDO was asked about their budget and if they had staff that assisted them. Therefore, within the theme of resources, there were specific subthemes that were identified, into funding and human resources.

Subtheme 2.1: Funding. Having the vital resources to carry out the work associated with the role required financial resources. While institutions often secure external funding to support diversity and inclusion efforts, Stanley et al. (2019) found it that it might be rare to have annual, budget-based, internally allocated funds to reward units specifically for diversity efforts. Each

CDO was asked if they had a budget to work with to fund their DEI work. Each CDO indicated that there were some financial resources at their disposal; however, what was more revealing was not necessarily the amount but the equity to other institutional initiatives.

When asked about resources on campus compared to other entities, a consistent response was that CDOs thought diversity initiatives were “funded” but not at the same level, or priority, as other entities. For example, one CDO was asked, “Do you feel like the resources for diversity are devoted the same in comparison (i.e., to other departments), and they quickly responded,

“NO, no.” One CDO was resourceful and streamlined the budgets of the student fee supported

137 cultural centers, which ultimately rolled up to the CDO bottom line, to provide collaborative programming. In Walton (2013), a review of Cogan’s theory on resource dependency during a budget scarcity yielded these two assumptions about funding goals within the budgeting process:

“[one] there should be as much congruence between individual or group goals and organizational goals as possible, and [two] that the value of individual or group behavior should be judged with reference to existing organizational objectives” (Cogan, 1980, p. 558, as cited in Walton, 2013).

This posed a rather interesting paradox that DEI, while touted as an institutional priority and objective, was not funded as equitably as other entities.

Others thought their initiatives were funded commensurate with other campus initiatives.

There was two institutions that did have what they believed was advanced funding, and significant funding, in the tens of millions of dollars, was committed from the president over a number of years. According to the CDO, it was a “formidable investment,” “significant influx of funds beyond our existing deal structure,” and they believed it to be important to moving DEI efforts forward. Having visible and vocal leadership that publicly puts a dollar amount and acknowledges the work that needs to be done was very impactful to those CDOs. The CDOs believed this visibility demonstrated an understanding of what needed to be committed to

“moving the needle forward” and fortified DEI work was as important as other efforts, like information technology, but it also legitimized the CDO role. Presidents are influential in not only moving DEI forward when they provide vision and set the strategic diversity agenda, but they also provide credibility in newly created administrative positions through budget and resource allocation (Kezar et al., 2008).

Having the CDO initiatives funded signaled the importance of the DEI work on campus.

One participant mentioned that their campus extended that one step further and included the

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CDO in the institutional budget requests. Campus budget requests are a core component of

institutional cultures and funding models. Similar to how other departments request funds on

campus, not only is funding allocated from presidential leadership, but campus units are required

to advance the DEI work through their individual budget allocations. The CDO I interviewed believed that using the budget process to ask units questions about their DEI efforts and how their spending will advance the DEI efforts on their campuses infuses it into all aspects of the

work. They expressed that having the CDO involved in the institutional budget process was

helpful. They said:

One of the mechanisms or one of the things that that we also have going on is that our

chief diversity officer sits in all of our budget meetings. So, a unit, or units, are justifying

their budget requests and the chief diversity officer is there, you know, to ask questions

around how DEI is situated within the various initiatives for which funding is being

requested.

Justification for funding is also important, as is having measures to show efforts are achieved.

This model of funding allocation and budget expenditures weaves DEI into the conversation with

administrators and leadership at all levels and speaks to organizational cultures, practices, and

opportunities to infuse at all aspects.

Subtheme 2.2: Human Resources. Again, within each institutional profile, was a brief

discussion of their organizational structure. This included “dedicated” staff that were organizationally included in their organizational chart or structure. Staffing levels contributed

resources to do diversity work, ensuring more than one person (i.e., the CDO) is able to cover

diversity work. Leon (2014) cautioned against the lack of human resources with the availability

of the CDO to coordinate and execute all the DEI work. It was very difficult for CDO’s who

139 were trying to advocate, train, plan, and deliver workshops, and be involved in institutional decision making when they were the only “subject-matter” expert on campus. Not only is it important for the CDO to be a knowledgeable, there must also be knowledge and available staff.

Several CDOs mentioned, “I wanted to hire two more because of the size of the place that have more diversity expertise and experience” and that “capacity building, infrastructure needs to be built” and “you never blink around the need for bodies to move the work [in other areas].”

There was a large discrepancy between the number of dedicated staff between the institutions. At one institution, there were only three individuals, including the CDO, who were directly responsible for the DEI work; while at another institution, there were at least 10 individuals not including the CDO or graduate students involved as DEI facilitators. In some instances, roles were “repurposed” and revised to expand the work of certain campus functional areas to provide more support. Some staffing included faculty and administrators hired to impact diversity, ensuring DEI is incorporated into hiring practices, search committees, tenure practices, and staff selections. For those CDO who had a significant staff for DEI, it allowed the CDO to be integrated into other aspects of the campus leadership and administration.

What was loosely mentioned but not expressly teased out was the influence of coalitions, or the social gadflies at their respective institutions on their role. Smith (2015) and Williams and

Wade-Golden (2013) discussed DEI work had largely been done by disparate pockets of committed individuals, and one role for the CDO is to bring together the committees and coalitions for more cross collaborations and relationships. Ahmed (2012) cautioned against relying on a committee or one individual or position to be responsible for “doing the diversity work”—it has to be an organizational commitment. There was some evidence from the available institutional documents institutional accolades of individuals, academic departments, and units,

140 that coalitions and collaboration was happening broadly for DEI work. However, the CDO from institution D mentioned that their staff was “repurposed” from other DEI “associated areas” to now fall under the CDO structure, but that many of the staff who had been “doing the DEI work” on campus now felt animosity toward the CDO role. While the CDO ultimately created partnerships with campus entities like admissions, new student orientation, and government relations, the CDO felt they had to be cautious of not “stepping on toes.”

Theme 3: Credibility

Throughout the participant interviews, credibility rose to a level of importance was for the CDO role. In Chapter 2, it was mentioned that the scope and function of the CDO position was critical for success. Also addressed was the personal characteristics (Williams & Wade-

Golden, 2007) combined with the highly-professionalized expertise (Worthington et al., 2020) a

CDO needed to facilitate DEI work. Source credibility was also an important aspect of legitimacy. For a CDO to be deemed credible with an internal environment, they need to be viewed as an authoritative source within the college or university. In addition to the aspects of organizational structure and resources that were just discussed, who filled the role itself, and credibility of that individual in the eyes of the internal campus constituency was a common thread across all four cases. For several of the CDO’s interviewed credibility for their role was gained when they were a member of the faculty member prior to stepping into CDO role.

For example, CDOs who were previously faculty had an administrative buffer once they assumed their role in the administration. As a faculty member, particularly if their scholarly work had focused on DEI, search committees would consider them extensively for the CDO role. A

CDO mentioned that for 20 years, they had served as a principle researcher and scholar on several important longitudinal studies on student diversity, and working closely with academic

141 and multicultural affairs to understand the diverse student experience. This experience allowed them to step into the role and intimately understand the institution’s DEI opportunities. Another

CDO labeled themselves a “reluctant administrator” stating they were not interested in leaving their post in the faculty. This CDO recalled when they were hired and stated, “We had a failed search. The search firm said, ‘We think you have the person for the job already here on the committee,’ and apparently I didn’t move quick enough to say, ‘Not it’ and landed in that role.”

However, once in the position, they understood the scholarly work they were producing and the practical nature of the CDO work paired nicely for the role; that it was almost a “lab for the work.” They were afforded the opportunity to marry pockets of their research expertise and their ability to influence DEI strategic planning on their campus.

Acquiring a CDO that has scholarly expertise in DEI provided an extended level of integration and allowed them to understand the experience of the faculty. The CDO at Institution

C mentioned, because they knew what it was like to be a faculty member and benefitted from having to “deal with things that don’t show up on an eval that impacts performance.”

When asked about their credibility in the role, the CDO from Institution C discussed their background and upbringing and how diversity education influenced them. They shared they had someone who helped them get to where they are now and how illustrating the importance of diversity education. The CDO noted the president was also from outside the academy, which they believed helped. I asked the CDO if they thought it was “because of your relationship with the president and where you fall in that cabinet, or do you just think that state has really committed to that and so that’s why you have all of these resources?” The CDO responded, “I would say that it’s some of both. . . . Relationships are being built across the campus that educate and inform everyone” on what the CDO is doing and DEI as a whole. The CDO shared, “That

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type of strategy leads to a lot of success. There are advantages, relationships, which are also

informing people to what you do, and, you know, I try and build a lot of collaboration.”

For the CDO from Institution D, their perspective on their credibility was interesting because the CDO had corporate diversity experience before entering higher education. This experience both helped and hindered their position. For example, it allowed the CDO to have a knowledge, understanding, and a framework to start the office from inception, which highlighted their expertise. The CDO also believed their credibility (i.e., mostly among the faculty) came from their business pedigree and ivy-league education: “To be very honest, I have two ivy league degrees and I think even though I didn’t have a PhD, I think that gave me some social capital

[with the faculty].” This source creditability among the faculty allowed them to recruit faculty, staff, and graduate students to be diversity facilitators. Despite perceiving a lack of trustworthiness among staff, the CDO did feel they gained the support of other student-facing departments like new student orientation, residential life, and the visitor’s center, and they noted partnering on a diversity education program for first-year students.

The CDO at Institution D felt their experience was different from CDOs at other institutions, which made it difficult for them to connect with their peers. They also shared this might occur because each institution views the role of the CDO differently. However, being part of national professional organizations like the NADOHE, the Council for Advancement of

Diversity and Equity, and the Association of Public Land-grant Universities helped them transition to and through their role.

I asked each CDO how others on their campus viewed their role and how they interacted with others on campus. These important questions allowed each CDO to articulate how they work with campus constituents and provided some insight on internal legitimacy. Three of the

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four CDOs were faculty members at their institutions prior to being appointed CDO, which

afforded them some source creditability. They shared coming from the faculty meant they were

previously visible on campus. In addition, they had a reputation for conducting research and

teaching, being involved with faculty governance, and presenting and facilitating workshops and

seminars. One CDO stated, with a close-knit faculty, it was natural to build relationships with

faculty senate and across units, which helped them “develop credibility” thus developing

partnerships.

However, for CDO at Institution D who was hired from outside academia, there were

marked differences in authority, being seen as a subject matter expert, having autonomy to

coordinate initiatives and the level of buy-in that was required to carry out those initiatives, and

the support of top-level leadership, “when you bring in people who have expertise to do the

work, the its critically important the institution is supportive.” Unlike in a corporation, where

top-level corporate leaders tended to let the subject matter experts be and would outwardly

support their initiatives, this was not the case in academia because of its very different power

structure, academic leadership, and governance. Additionally, the CDO felt corporate

environments allowed for more collaboration and cross-coordination than higher education environments. This reality surprised the CDO because the taskforce report that recommended the appointment of the CDO comprehensively suggested the integration of the CDO role into all aspects of the institution (i.e., from student life to hiring, procurement, fundraising, and alumni).

Similarly, another CDO spoke about how DEI work cannot be done in isolation.

According to this CDO, if the goal is to create a more inclusive campus environment, engaging in partnerships, collaborations, relationships, and connection was the “secret sauce” of DEI

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work. The CDO discussed the main role—over and beyond what they knew about DEI work—

was building relationships. They said:

To engage in this work, you really have to prioritize relationship building. . . .You know,

it’s the ability to pick up the phone and call in a favor or to ask for assistance in trying to

engage in this work. This work is very relational. It’s cultural and relational at its core,

you know, and an effective officer knows that and prioritizes the relationship building

that needs to take place.

The credibility of the CDO to meet with campus stakeholders and develop close partnerships

with different campus entities is what will move DEI.

Theme 4: “The Diversity Work, Big D and Little d”

The theme of diversity work was expected to be present, as it substantiates the literature

from Williams (2013) and Williams and Wade-Golden (2007) in the creation of the CDO role.

However, a unique expression of the exp oressithemen emerged from the interviews, “big D Diversity”

verses “little d diversity.” Throughout the interviews, CDOs indicated diversity work as

“Diversity with a capital D,” the intentional and committed effort to DEI and strategic and

organizational change. Smith (2020) asserted that higher education as an institution needs to

progress forward in the framing and understanding of diversity. The idea of “big D” diversity as

both an extensive and comprehensive blueprint for institutional equity and inclusion that

encompasses and expands the entrance and acceptance of non-majority faculty, staff, and

students leading to transformational organizational integration (Smith, 2020, 2015). For these

CDOs, Smith’s (2015) transformation organizational diversity is an extensive process that incorporates efforts across the institution at all levels to infuse DEI into curricula, hiring, programming, etc. (i.e., big “D” diversity). Each CDO gave mention to how DEI can be

145 operationalized across an institution to enact long-term change; however, CDOs also expressed institutions can often reduce the work to diversity “with a lowercase d” to focus on just the number of students of color enrolled and faculty and staff working for the institution. The CDO from Institution A explained to me:

I think we need to move away from the top-down approach and have a much more

horizontal-vertical approach to engage in diverse equity inclusion. I think the top-down

or bottom-up approach doesn’t always reach the middle management. And I think that’s

such a heart of where these—how diverse equity inclusion gets operationalized or

doesn’t. I think, you know, we have made some progress in terms of having frameworks

and concepts, but I feel like we’ve taken the equity out of the work. And so—and it’s

been more about what Sara Ahmed refers to as the happy talk of diversity. And we really

need to recenter issues related to power, privilege, and oppression in our equity work.

And I would go a little bit further given the national context, that we need folks who have

the ability to engage in race-conscious leadership. And not that race is the end-all be-all,

but it is I think the most important starting place to engage in multiple forms of

oppression.

Diversity work is really about engaging the entire institutional system in DEI from a wholistic perspective, and not using numbers as a sole metric of diversity.

Each CDO agreed that one aspect of aligning the work to “big D” diversity objectives and advancing diversity means having a common vernacular about DEI. This means having a consistent understanding across the institution for what DEI means so that when people are talking about it, everyone has a common understanding and framework (i.e., not necessarily about a specific group of people but the general understanding of inclusivity). Diversity work

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cannot be done in insolation and it cannot be fully actualized without encompassing equity and inclusion. Within this theme of “big D” diversity came two subthemes, the diversity “work” and

“moving the needle.” These themes emerged in the implicit coding of the interviews, rather than

explicitly stated in the interview.

Subtheme 4.1: Diversity “Work.” Throughout all of the interviews and literature, there

is a common phrase of “doing the diversity work.” The work of diversity has most often been

referred to as increasing the number of underrepresented individuals (Smith, 1995, 2015). Part of

the diversity work can be interpreted as the actual administrative work of a CDO, including

meetings and representation within institutional leadership. Diversity “work” could also be

referenced as bringing in and supporting students of color in the classrooms and through

services, and hiring and keeping faculty and staff of color. Doing the diversity work might be

done through coalitions like that of PCD (LePeau et al., 2019), or social gadflies (LePeau, 2018),

and BRT (LePeau et al., 2018) collectively meeting. The “diversity work” is more than just

hitting numbers, it is about true cultural and organizational transformation, it is about social

change and actually changing the minds and perspectives of people, both in the majority and

minority (Smith, 2015). If we compare it to something like enrollment numbers, number of

services offered, courses, faculty and staff, etc., it appears more manageable, more tangible

because there are evident outcomes. Institutions know when they have achieved something

because they can literally see an aggregate goal. For some diversity might mean checking off a

box but, according to Smith (2015, 2020), it should evolve and grow into so much more!

Some of the misconstruction of “diversity work” is that its only the responsibility of the

CDO. This leads to a misinterpretation of the role of the CDO and that as several CDO expressed

“magical powers of the CDO to fix everything” and “to eradicate racism, sexism and intolerance

147 and bigotry and homophobia.” During our conversation, the CDO from Institution C explained that not just the CDO role, but the breadth of their impact is the entire campus. They said:

I would say that’s probably the norm. And you can have large institutions that have hired

it [CDO], and then, some of its there’s a lack of understanding. I think what you started

with Megan is checking the box and window dressing, I do think there is some of that,

but I think the vast majority is just a lack of understanding and I ask people to tell me—

write down on this piece of paper what I do. You know my colleagues can’t grasp it, it’s

not that I work harder but there’s a broad dimension to this, you know? From a parent

who pounds their child . . . because they’re in college to get a $5,000 scholarship how do

you have those conversations too. Encouraging kids of color to study abroad and how do

you have those conversations cause you gotta talk not just to the student but you know

the parents, grandparents, that its ok to get on airplane to go to Switzerland you know.

And those are dimensions that honestly a lot of campus doesn’t deal with, at least not by

themselves. As CDOs you know we do. . . when something happens in the community

the CDO is looked to, to step in to that external conversation and be a part of the solution

to solve it. And so it’s just a vast array of not necessarily responsibilities but rather

implicit expectations that are on CDOs and it’s important when I tell CDO’s that I work

with, young CDO’s that I work with be cognizant of the expectations that you put on

yourself coming into this role and more importantly that others put on to you. Because

my job isn’t to eradicate racism, sexism and intolerance and bigotry and homophobia. I

can’t. And if I set that as the goal I’ve already set myself up for failure. Too often we do

that especially when situations emerge out of turmoil.

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There is some work to be done to educate those in the majority about diversity best practices and basic inclusion. Simply hitting enrollment and hiring targets or winning awards does not mean the work is finished. For the CDO at Institution C, “The accolades are great but as I tell people at some level we should be embarrassed because that really should be the norm. It’s great to celebrate and recognize our commitment that we value, create a culture of inclusion. But that really should be more.”

This “work” extends farther than just enrolling or hiring numbers of people of color, “the work” is embracing people of color in decision making, into the curriculum, structure, and into the institutional perspective. The work of the CDO extends into creating capacity for DEI through training and development including cultural competence, the language of inclusion, inherent bias, and constructive dialogue. Some CDOs expressed feeling like the work is never done. One CDO stated:

While diversity is necessary, it is not sufficient to cultivate the types of climates that we

hope to have . . . here at the university [Institution B], because you have to be both

diverse and—as well as support, you know—commit to actively challenging and

responding to bias, harassment, and discrimination from a perspective of equity. And,

you know, committing to have an environment where everyone has equal opportunity to

grow, succeed, and achieve excellence now. And in terms of inclusion, committing to

deliberate efforts to ensure that our campus is a place where, you know, differences are

welcome, different perspectives are respectfully heard, and where everybody has a sense

of belonging and an inclusion. So, we commit to those three things as a system, so that’s

why we refer to it as DI [diversity and inclusion].

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True diversity work is about capacity building through intentional structures of senior leadership, presidents committed to the DEI work daily, and coalitions and partnerships to engage in a continued learning and growth.

Subtheme 4.2: “Moving the Needle.” Several decades ago technology was viewed as an institutional imperative. It was permeating every aspect of life outside of the higher education institution that it emerged as an institutional necessity and that touched all aspects of institutional practice and culture. Colleges and universities began integrate technology into every facet— strategic planning documents, capital planning and infrastructure, critical human resources, even curriculum, educational objectives, and assessment. It influenced the content and means of student learning, the delivery of curricular objectives, and mechanisms for serving external and internal constituents. It forced powerful and rapid changes to the capacity for senior leadership, research, pedagogy, communication, talent and required skill sets, and established best practices.

While arguably there are some who mistrust and disapprove of changes to technology, and refuse to concede to its influence, it will not change the fact that life has been significantly impacted and altered by technology. Diversity represents a similar powerful and imperative necessity to change (Smith, 2015). “Moving the needle” means understanding and interrupting the embedded practices and procedures that exclude and devalue (Smith, 2015), but that are also resistant to change. This means making sure DEI is intentionally reflected in student learning outcomes, curriculum, and deconstruction of organizational barriers. Equity, equality, and diversity are not the same and should not be addressed or treated as such. According to the CDOs in this study,

DEI should cut across all the facets of the institution. One effective solution that emerged from the data was onboarding for faculty, staff, and students during new student orientation and hiring: Could DEI and principles move the needle if offered and valued when the student or

150 employee enters the campus? CDOs believed hiring practices that include DEI as a foundational component would still move the needle and cited people who join organizations where their values align experience longevity and a broader incorporation of values. One of the CDOs stated,

“But it’s that the secret sauce to engaging this work is partnerships, collaboration, relationships, connection.” When the diversity “work” is internalized and operationalized, that is what “moves the needle” on DEI. The CDO from Institution B put it brilliantly,

We commit to those three concepts—diversity, equity and inclusion—always traveling

together because, while diversity is necessary, it is not sufficient to cultivate the . . . type

of climate we hope to have here because you have to be both diverse and, as well as,

support, you know, commit, to actively challenging and responding to bias, harassment,

and discrimination from a perspective of equity. And, you know, committing to have an

environment where everyone has equal opportunity to grow, succeed, and achieve

excellence now, and, in terms of inclusion, committing to deliberate efforts to ensure that

our campus is a place where, you know, differences are welcome, different perspectives

are respectfully heard, and where everybody has a sense of belonging and an inclusion.

So, we commit to those three things as a system.

Those three concepts diversity, equity and inclusion have to always travel together to move the needle.

Conclusion

Synergy of effort through the shared resources—human, financial, and capital, committed alignment between enacted and espoused values, intentional levers for change, interrupting systems of resistance, and the importance distributed leadership are how DEI will continue to build institutional capacity for DEI (Smith, 2015). While all of these aspects must work in

151 tandem and coordinated effort, the organizational legitimacy of the CDO role is a cornerstone of

“moving the needle” on DEI. At the conclusion of each interview, the CDOs were asked what they believed was the future of the CDO position both at their institution and nationally. They discussed staying vigilant and understanding that a large ship turns slowly—these systems were built over 150 years and sometimes it takes some chipping away at them—and continuing to provide historical context for how things came to be and what we need to do to push the work forward. They also mentioned the importance of short-term gains and long-range vision when helping people reshape their thinking and understanding and engaging in the work. One CDO stated:

It requires interrogating policies and practices that we take for granted, checking to see

whether or not institutional data can point you to gaps in our values, in our mission. So

yeah, absolutely, being more intentional about interrogating and deconstructing

institutional policies and practices.

What was also important was not just having a CDO sit at the table but having a real “voice” or influence in the decision making, and impacting the campus not just with regard to DEI work.

For the needle to move on true institutional diversity work, the CDO cannot be the sole voice or

“subject matter expert” for DEI. The CDO should be about holding all people at the institution accountable to the diversity “work”, and making sure that students, faculty, staff, and administration have the knowledge and ability to ask the same critical questions they would expect their CDO to offer.

Throughout the interviews the CDOs explained that moving the needle forward means not expecting your CDO to be the “magic power” to solve all the DEI issues. Instead they recommended having an entire executive leadership team that has cultural competencies and a

152 track record of inclusive leadership to engage in the institution to move it forward as a whole.

The CDO at Institution B stated, “National tensions and racial animus are not going to make these positions any less valuable. In fact, there is an increase in the market across higher education for these CDO positions.” Research on embedding DEI into every aspect of the institution from practices to culture is how DEI succeeds and progresses. When DEI is embedded into all aspects of the organizational culture, it is more likely to weather the storm of transitional leadership allowing the institution to actively seek out leaders who hold DEI as important and who will advance the work and positions the institution to be selective in finding someone who will push the work.

Finally, When I asked where the future of the CDO role was going—the CDO from

Institution C mentioned that we needed greater cultivation of pipe-line opportunities for these professionals like any other SLT professionals. As was just mentioned, the need and opportunity for a CDO is not going to diminish, in fact it will increase as society grows more diverse and social complex. Three CDOs mentioned not just the need to cultivate professionals for this position, but to really to focus on not pushing talented people, especially people of color, out of higher education roles. One CDO said,

But there’s some pockets that we really got a much better job and be more effecting in

pushing for what we’re going to really run some incredible talent out of higher ed. Because

you go to the private sector and you pay a whole lot more and not have to deal with some

of the things that you’ve had to deal with in higher ed, and so I think that’s a piece as a

CDO that we play an important role, that’s where administratively has got to come together

and collaborate to have the conversation to get all the input.

While another commented,

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if there are institutions who don’t think people can transition from, um, corporate sector,

private sector, or non-profit event into higher ed, I think they’re wrong . . . I think we

gotta become more nimble as we think about staffing and have folks on staff who can

help people to navigate and to effectively transition their skills to the institution.

It is also not just about the conversation on the campus, but in higher education as well, to make

sure we are not running talented people out of the profession because of a lack of opportunity.

To summarize the individual cases, the cross-case analysis, and the future of the CDO

role, it can be encapsulated in structural sustainability and creditability—structures have to be in

place and have to be fixed—for CDO success. The CDO roles have to be able to survive the

changing of the times and be adapting to what is going on around them—to change course or

directions—to adapt and to advance. For DEI work to advance and for the CDO to be an

organizationally legitimate position within the senior-level administration, credibility for the

individual in the role, and these roles needed to be embedded in the institution with access to

sufficient resources.

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CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

The organizational role of the chief diversity officer (CDO) and the work they do on college and university campuses have become a growing interest in higher education. Twenty years ago, if diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) work was to occur on a campus, it would be done by a committee of dedicated faculty and staff of color with limited resources and support.

Research is growing and showing that CDOs are being elevated to executive-level and C-suite roles more than ever before (Leon, 2014; Williams, 2013; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007;

Worthington et al., 2020). In a recent review of the NADOHE standards of professional practice,

Worthington et al. (2020) highlighted the critical importance of intentionally situating these

CDO roles onto senior leadership teams with authority and influence on institutional DEI initiatives that permeate the institution, “An essential feature of the newly revised standards is the emphasis on EDI as a mission-centered imperative for excellence. Cabinet-level diversity officers help to craft strategic planning and programmatic initiatives for EDI that arise from and clearly reflect that institutional mission” (p. 10). Conversely, without proper structural support and resources, these CDO roles are merely placing a band aid over a gaping wound. According to Jackson-Jelly and Rodriquez-Rentas (2020), “The diversity officer is a bandage, a quick fix to assuage BIPOC students, faculty, and staff. But over time, often, the diversity officer becomes the scapegoat: ill equipped and under supported, ultimately set up to fail at enacting the change necessary to move the needle” (para. 8). At the same time Kezar et al. (2020) advocated for

expanded literature within higher education on resource dependency, institutional theory, how

environments hold sway over institutional priorities, and how legitimacy validates the power and

credibility of certain senior leadership team members. These combined gaps in the literature gave

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rise to my research: How does the CDO obtain organizational legitimacy at a predominantly

White college or university?

The qualitative interview-based study of four CDOs at predominantly White universities

(PWI) examined the organizational legitimacy of their role. The four cases in this study give

different examples of CDO structures and provided some interesting points of commonality and

contrast. They confirm the research of the importance of an organizational structure that not only suits the institutional culture, but one where the CDO has direct communication with the president, a member of the senior leadership team/administrators, and has access to human and financial resources for DEI (Harvey, 2014; Leon, 2014; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007). This research also highlighted the responsibility and authority the CDO has to guide campus-wide

DEI directives, as emphasized in Worthington et al. (2020). These cases spoke to the importance of human, financial, and technical resources play in not just accomplishing the DEI work, but in communicating with their constituents on and off campus the importance of DEI work to the institution. Finally, this research brings new information to the literature on the importance of the credibility a CDO acquires and uses to advance their work and how important credibility of the

CDO is for whole campus DEI integration, and how all of this combines to cultivate the diversity

“work” and move the needle forward.

In this chapter, I link the importance of resource dependence to organizational structure and credibility of the CDO role at PWIs, the impact RDT and IT have on internal legitimacy, as well as offer implications for advancing DEI work on PWI campuses. It is also important I reassert two core definitions used to and their influence on this work. First, was the use of

Smith’s (1995) definition of diversity into four different dimensions: representation, climate and

response to intolerance, educational/scholarly mission, and organizational and intellectual

156 transformation. Through this research, Smith’s fourth dimension of transformation, the final dimension in the definition of diversity, was reflected the most. The transformation dimension is the most complicated of the four dimensions, because it requires a fundamental change to various institutional practices, traditions, and culture (Smith, 2015). Transformation, in this definition of diversity, is a complete shift of institutional mindsets and practices, where students/faculty/staff, curriculum, and learning are more inclusive and holistic (Smith, 1995,

2015). In Smith’s (2012) rearticulated framework, transformational DEI work happens not only with intentional addition of faculty, staff, and students from underrepresented identities into the college or university, but it takes an intentional disruption or organizational systems organizational change (Fulton et al., 2019), like traditionally exclusionary policies, practices, procedures, curriculum, and an organizational adoption of inclusionary and progressive mindset to really “move the needle.”

It is also imperative to reiterate how organizational legitimacy was defined and conceptualized in this research. Legitimacy is defined as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions” (Suchman, 1995, p. 574). Legitimacy guides the exchange of resources between an organization and their external environment. Those who hold the resources hold the power and dictate how those resources are allocated, but often validate an unspoken value of one function over another (Aime et al., 2010; Austin & Jones,

2016). Legitimacy serves as a form of social signaling to external stakeholders they exchange economic resources with that the organization shares or supports the same values or social obligations (Austin & Jones, 2016). Internal legitimacy is the organization’s credibility from their internal stakeholders (i.e., employees and/or students) that there are shared values (Aime et

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al., 2010). Whereas, if diversity is valued, it can be a factor in an organization’s legitimacy. By

incorporating the CDO position into organizational structures, colleges and universities signal to their internal and external environments that they value diversity (Clark, 2011; Williams &

Wade-Golden, 2013; Wilson, 2013). By providing the CDO with equitable resources and credibilty among senior leadership, it would be deemed a committed action (Ahmed, 2012).

Thererefore, I sought to explain organizational legitimacy not in the argument of the worth of

CDOs existence, but the significance and esteem of its position within the context of organizational structure and avaliable human, financial, and capital resources to influence transformational diversity.

In earlier chapters, I mentioned that over the last decade, empirical research on CDOs examining the content, knowledge, and understanding of the CDOs relative experience, but limited literature existed on the CDO’s direct influence on campus climate, organizational culture, or organizational legitimacy within colleges and universities (Henderson, 2020; Smith,

2020; Woodward, 2014). Literature also explained that CDOs rely on building relationships to fulfill their responsibilities (Harvey, 2014; Williams & Wade-Golden, 2007). An analogy that continued to circle around the literature was Dr. Cox’s notion of “Diversity as a window dressing.” Several of the CDO’s I interviewed agreed with that analogy, including one CDO who said, “that’s a very appropriate generalized critique of, you know, because that is how it happened” and another that mentioned “then you know you have to ask yourself whether or not it’s a good investment of your own time and energy to dress the windows if that’s not what you’re about.” Through this study, I intended to bridge several of those gaps and address how not only the CDO, but diversity, becomes woven into the fabric of the institution.

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Discussion of the Results

Over the last 10 years, the CDO has been a growing area of research in higher education.

Studies include reporting lines, relationship building, professional qualities and expertise of a

CDO, personal characteristics and identities, and impact on campus climate in relationship to

CDO hire (Henderson 2020; Leon, 2014; Marshall, 2019; Nixon, 2017; Stanley et al., 2019;

Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). Unlike the few studies that have focused on the organizational

structure, I wanted to examine whether CDO legitimacy within the organizational structure was

related to the availability of human, financial, and capital resources. As I crafted my study, I

wanted to contextualize the creation of these positions, specifically the resources at the CDO’s

disposal. After all, according to my initial research question, to be legitimate CDO’s needed

credibility and access to human, financial, physical, and technical resources. What I revealed

during these interviews and the subsequent exploration into the transcripts, websites, and

available documents, was that the separate and overlapping factors of leadership, resources, and

credibility contributed to CDO legitimacy.

Internal Legitimacy

Legitimacy is important to an organization because it is directly related to its survival by

the ability to obtain resources. To determine internal legitimacy, I determined that for the CDO role to have legitimacy there would be intentionally allocated resources including funding for

programs and initiatives, staffing to carry out DEI plans and operate the office, and office space

that would be specific to the CDO. While all of the CDO’s interviewed had some compilation of

those resources, the level at which those resources were distributed were contingent on the

perceived value the university’s leadership placed on the CDO and DEI. Of the CDO’s

interviewed the ones who had the most internal legitimacy were granted that through an

159 amalgamation of outward approval of president, integration into the senior leadership team

(SLT), and credibility by faculty and staff, which influenced the actual and perceived level of resources the CDO was afforded. The CDO legitimacy was not an if/then strategy but rather a both/and construct. The crux was the support from executive-level leadership like the president, provost, and others on the SLT/cabinet. This was reflected in comments like from the CDO for

Institution A, “executive leadership makes a tremendous difference.” At universities where the president publicly supported and acknowledged both CDOs and the diversity work, and CDOs were given dedicated resources for DEI, the CDI interpreted they were viewed by stakeholders as giving more credibility to the CDO.

The credibility given to CDOs via the president, allowed the CDO to request more resources, collaboration, and interdependence from the SLT, faculty, campus partners, and external sources. The more resources, the more credibility; and the more credibility, the more resources. The converse was also true, if a president did not publicly support the CDO and their work, the credibility of the CDO to internal stakeholders was diminished and with it, diminished resources. According to the CDO from Institution D, if campus leadership does not outwardly support the CDO or diversity initiatives, “they [CDO] will fall flat.” This not only supports the literature on the importance of the president for DEI (Kezar, 2007; Kezar et al., 2019) but provides a new finding that suggests the president also makes or break the CDO’s legitimacy.

A key component in both executive-level support, resource allocation, and credibility was an embedded structure. When the CDO was embedded into the organization at the SLT, or C- suite/cabinet-level, and had direct or dotted-line reporting structure to the university president, there was increased support of the CDO and their work. CDO’s who had a president who publicly championed diversity efforts, and had a direct reporting line, felt like their positions

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were comparable to their other SLT and that resources were allocated proportionally among the

various campus priorities. Those CDOs also perceived an increase in advocacy, collaboration,

and outward support for both the CDO and DEI. The structural incorporation of the CDO into

the SLT also allowed the CDO to champion DEI initiatives at every level of the university,

including human, financial, capital, and technical resources. This allowed DEI to permeate

institutional priorities and be strategically integrated into all aspects of planning and practice and

not just simply “added on.” It also had significant implications for the CDO’s credibility among

stakeholders who then saw the CDO as “a representative voice for diversity” on the SLT. This

particular finding of representation will be discussed later.

Credibility was vital for the CDO to carry out their DEI work at the division, department, and unit levels of the university. For the CDO’s I interviewed, they were responsible for not only crafting the diversity initiatives and targets but also “shepherding” university wide DEI implementation. The CDO is viewed as “all things diversity,” which often means providing direct and indirect consultation on issues related to hiring, faculty and staff training, curriculum, student life, and bias and discrimination. This requires CDO’s to have institutional credibility among faculty and staff.

While I just referenced that credibility could be obtained through structural means, it was also developed through their expertise or source credibility. In Chapter 2, it was established that a source is seen as credible through a combination of their expertise and trustworthiness. For the

CDOs who come from the faculty ranks to assume the CDO role at their own institution, there was an increased perception of expertise, particularly if their scholarly work was related to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This can be related to an idea of social capital. According to

Lin (2017) social capital is the link between individuals and structure and the networks that an

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individual creates in and through social groups. Social capital is the intangible, social resource

that a specific individual acquires through their knowledge, skills, abilities, or social status

provided to them through the institution’s network and leveraged for access to information or

resources. Likely the source credibility came from their understanding of the nuances and importance of the faculty work. Three of the four CDOs had experienced being faculty at their institution and serving on DEI committees prior to accepting their CDO role. That likely provided trustworthiness that was needed to develop credibility. If faculty experience is combined with the subject matter expertise of research interests or background in DEI, that increased the CDO’s credibility and internal legitimacy (Aime et al., 2010). The CDO’s ability to be effective in their role and create cross-campus collaborations came in part from their individual credibility. Source credibility became the foundation for internal legitimacy of the

CDO.

Individual credibility gave rise to role credibility, which gave rise to internal legitimacy of the CDO. Jahn et al. (2020) found a positive correlation between credibility and legitimacy, specifically organizational legitimacy. Prior work had often consolidated these together, when in fact they are separate. According to Jahn et al. (2020), source credibility has an influence on legitimacy but legitimacy does not always influence source creditability. The motives of the organization and the organizational credibility influenced an individual’s judgement of the organization’s legitimacy (Aime et al., 2010). It was not just that the university had a CDO, it was a combination of the structural legitimacy of the CDO and the individual who occupied the role.

This was made evident with the CDO from Institution D. When looking contextually at this CDO, it was apparent that the role was not given internal legitimacy at that university. Even

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though a diversity report had explicitly supported the creation of the CDO role office, there was

a lack structural support, executive-level support, and the credibility among faculty and staff.

The CDO made several comments about not being part of the president’s “kitchen cabinet,” not

being included in institutional decision making, not having the public support of the university’s

president on very public incidents, and not being provided the necessary resources to fulfill the

university’s diversity plan.

The CDO mentioned that coming from a corporate CDO role to one within higher

education should have provided the requisite expertise needed to be seen as credible. The CDO believed being a subject matter expert in operationalizing diversity plans for a large, multinational company would provide some credibility, but believed rather it was their ivy- league educational background with which the faculty connected. The CDO did gain some credibility and resources with collaborations and partnerships when the CDO provided them with the resources. This CDO lacked the internal legitimacy they needed to be effective in their role.

They left the position soon after the interview, which has occupied by an interim candidate until

it was filled by someone having CDO experience at another institution.

The consideration of my research is that is not just enough to establish a CDO position

but to be viewed as legitimate with the internal environment, the CDO position needs human,

financial, capital, and technical resources, needs to be structured in the SLT with access to and

support from the university president to be deemed credible. These three factors provide internal

legitimacy and that internal legitimacy is what allowed the CDO to navigate the DEI work on

their campus.

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Diversity Work

True diversity work has to be something transformational. It has to be incorporated at all levels of the institution, including admissions, programs, hiring and promotion of faculty, and staff, and curriculum. It cannot be done in isolation. True diversity cannot be one line in a mission statement. It has to be something that is lived out every day and breathed through the institutional practices and championed at all levels for it to be truly transformational and lasting.

As one CDO expressed, “You know people think you come in with a magic wand and all of a sudden, this fairy dust sprinkles and racism and homophobia and sexism and ageism all of those things—poof—vanish into thin air.” Cox (1993) and Smith (2015) discussed affective outcomes as part of the importance of diversity. These outcomes are influenced by the employee’s perceptions of cultural diversity and influence members a sense of belonging, feelings of being valued by the organization, and level of involvement and career satisfaction. Often times the

CDO is looked to as the sole provider and spokesperson for diversity on a campus. Seen as a magic pill for diversity, the CDO is often looked to speak on behalf of all the minority and marginalized populations at a college or university (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). But diversity work is really about engaging an entire system in wholistic understanding. The three components of structure, resources, and credibility supported the theme of “the diversity work.”

Part of the work was the actual administrative pieces of serving in the CDO role, but from a larger perspective, the “work” encompassed within this study reference diversity work as falling into “big D diversity” and “little d diversity.” Again, using Smith (1995) as reference for the definition of diversity, the “little d diversity” referred to as the increase of representative, structural, or critical mass of students, faculty, and staff of color as part of the CDO work. CDOs were cautious not to distill down their work as to just increasing the number of Black faculty,

164 staff, and students and people of color at their university. For the CDOs, “the work” was embracing “big D Diversity” in that diversity and minority identities were not just considered but included and incorporated at all levels: decision making, curriculum, structure, campus safety, and the overall institutional perspective. Embracing this perspective of diversity would “move the needle” on the larger work of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

For these four CDO’s having the source creditability, primarily among the faculty, was vitally important to not only doing the DEI work, but to moving the needle on diversity.

According to this research, if the CDO can acquire source credibility through their educational pedigree and research experience, deemed as trustworthiness from their faculty and SLT peers, either from coming within the ranks of faculty membership or from sitting on various committees and workgroups. However, if the source credibility was not attainable by those two means particularly if the position was a new position, the executive leadership could communicate credibility and legitimacy to the CDO role through their incorporation into the executive level cabinet. Once the CDO role, either via the person inhabiting the role or through its establishment, had source credibility that garnered it greater internal legitimacy.

Implications for Institutions

Knowledge without action is futile and action without information is careless. Research is only good for sitting on shelf and acquiring dust if it does not inspire and provide action for the reader. The intention behind this research was not only to expand the literature on internal legitimacy and CDOs, but to provide tangible points of practice for colleges and university presidents and SLTs. For organizational sciences, generic knowledge needs to be contextualized and interpreted for practitioners to use in their daily operations. Avenier (2010) described the importance of practical application in research:

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Putting the knowledge elaborated in research projects into practical use for design

purposes is a main goal of knowledge generation in organizational design science, as well

as a means to enhance its pragmatic legitimization via putting it to the test of actual

experience in various settings. . . when put into use, any available knowledge, regardless

of the epistemological paradigm in which it has been initially developed, is to be

considered as a heuristic guide having several possible roles. These are essentially: to

arouse scholar and practitioner reflection, to provide them with enlightening viewpoints

of the problem at hand, and to stimulate their creativity in designing their action(s). (p.

1244)

There is a call for scholars of organizations and organizational science to develop research designs that can operationalize the relationship between management knowledge and practical action empirically (Jarzabkowski et al., 2010). I first identify as practitioner and my underlying

principle as a researcher is to provide actionable research and implications. Therefore, I provide

recommendations for how can this research be used to influence institutional practice.

No two CDO roles are alike and because no two higher education institutions are exactly

alike, no to CDOs would experience their role the same way. However, the challenges

experienced by many diversity officers are inherent to institutions because they are embedded in

the status quo and resistant “to modifying internal structures and to implementing remedial

measures that would facilitate accomplishing the very goals of diversity and inclusion that the

institutions claim they want to achieve” (Harvey, 2014, p. 92). As studies continue to emerge on

the role and impact of the CDO it is important for a college or university to understand the

impact of incorporating a CDO into their organization. More and more colleges and universities

are responding to the need for social justice and racial intolerance to be an administrative

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position for diversity. “To add a layer of complexity to the issue, among the colleges and

universities without a diversity officer, university presidents have suddenly been bombarded with

impassioned cries of ‘we need one, we need one now!’” (Jackson-Jolley & Rodriquez-Rentas,

2020, para. 5). According to an article in Inside Higher Ed, colleges and universities can no longer dismiss the need for a chief diversity office and officer, but should be actively working to create and elevate a CDO (Parker III, 2020). Conversely, adding a position merely out of reactionary or symbolic means, performative action, will not mean the CDO is effective and in

fact can make chilly campus climates for diversity even colder (Ahmed, 2012; Parker III, 2020).

This research provides institutions takeaways to afford their CDO with internal legitimacy.

Takeaway: Executive-Level Leadership

The first key takeaway is the reporting lines, access, and support of the institution’s

executive leadership (i.e., president or chancellor) for a CDO’s role. Presidential rhetoric around

diversity determines who was considered valuable (Cole & Harper, 2017; Squire et al., 2019). If

the president did not visibly and vocally support the CDO, their efforts were not as welcomed or

supported on campus. This might lead to campus entities blocking CDO efforts to resources, or

the CDO expended considerably more time to create coalitions or committees to carry out the

DEI work. What is noteworthy is that if a president personally placed a high value on DEI, the

president was more likely expended some of their social capital to provide the CDO with visible

and vocal support, as well as allocating considerable resources, encouraged collaboration and

partnerships across administrative SLT, and created a reporting structure that both intentionally

included CDO into the institutional initiatives, and signaled to the campus that DEI was not just

a priority, it was a necessity.

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Williams and Wade-Golden (2013) and concurrent research by Henderson (2020)

outlined structural components for institutions initiating new positions or promoting current

positions to an executive-level, SLT status, including cabinet-level access and reporting. One

thing was paramount and that is the impactful and intentional inclusion of the CDO into the

cabinet or the SLT, namely by the university president.

The SLT has some of the most direct influence over the internal legitimacy of the CDO.

The SLT controlled the access to institutional resources, set the institutional agenda and

priorities, and advised the president on institutional matters. CDOs who were integrated into the

senior leadership team or the president’s cabinet achieved greater internal legitimacy as not only

the DEI subject matter expertise, but the work of the CDO role integral to the policies, practices,

and daily operations. For CDO’s being relegated to the “JV squad,” it gave the faculty, staff, and

students the impression that the CDO was not involved in campus decision making and,

therefore, DEI was not a priority. Intentional integration into the senior leadership team includes

a restructuring the CDO with a senior level title (vice president, vice provost, or vice chancellor)

a direct reporting line to the president or chancellor, regular and consistent access to other senior

leadership team members including cabinet meetings and retreats, and regular public address

with the CDO about DEI initiatives.

Takeaway: Credibility

The second takeaway is credibility of the CDO role. As just stated, the CDO position can

garner credibility via the SLT. In addition to having a CDO positioned properly, it is also

important for CDO credibility to have the right person in that position. Scholarly works like that

of Williams and Wade-Golden (2007, 2013), Worthington et al. (2014, 2017, 2020) and articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Diversity in Higher Education have established the

168 professional expertise and requirements that a CDO position should encompass. While prior research has incorporated some of the personal aspects of the person holding the CDO position, as well as the scholarly and professional experience a candidate should possess, a takeaway from this research is that credibility of the CDO role can be reinforced based on the perceived trustworthiness and expertise of the individual holding the position. CDOs who hold prior faculty experience or research in DEI provide the necessary credentials for credibility.

The CDO is viewed as the campus DEI subject matter expert, and therefore, should be filled by someone who has credibility with the faculty and staff. This was one important aspect of the Rabl et al.’s (2020) analysis of legitimizing of diversity managements, the influence of expertise among SLT (Kuipers & Stoker, 2009) and Grim et al. (2019) explored the legitimacy of academic diversity officers at the University of Michigan. These academic diversity officers spent a considerable amount of time building credibility within their academic discipline.

However, some academic diversity officers had increased legitimacy because they had experience as a faculty member within an academic discipline they were working. CDOs who have served on university-wide service or diversity committees, or have come from faculty and understand faculty governance, fared better in this study. Grim et al. (2019) also found that faculty performed better in the role as academic diversity officers because they already had prior knowledge of the faculty experience. While I am not advocating that institutions only higher internal candidates or only faculty, my research, as well as Grim et al. (2019), have shown a positive relationship between CDOs who were promoted from within to those external candidates. It is also important to note this was a very small sample and not generalizable, but it does show that the creditability of the person in the position was vital. Smith (2015) discussed that one of the mechanisms for transformational change was the incorporation of DEI into the

169 curriculum, the scholarship, and the teaching and learning. The participants in this study who identified as having been faculty and enjoyed more credibility because they had a

“close knit relationship with the faculty” could understand the dynamics of faculty in academia.

As CDO roles continue to increase the number of qualified individuals will also increase through the pervasiveness of diversity education and opportunities for research and experience. Thus, it will create a new pipeline of professionals with the experience and skills to serve in CDO roles.

This is also informative for higher educational about the types of experiences and research background and preparation programs and opportunities required for these senior CDO roles.

As was also mentioned earlier, in lieu of only hiring internal candidates, a college or university can extend the CDO credibility through visible and vocal leadership by the president, and outward collaboration and resource exchange with the SLT. Again, if the CDO does not have a supportive president it is more likely they will need to expend significant social capital to gain credibility for their DEI work.

Additionally, what was not expressly asked, but did appear in the concept map of this theme, was the notion of representation and perceived value, specifically whether the CDO believed it was important for the role to be filled by someone of color. Several of the CDO’s spoke parenthetically about how their personal identity impacted their perceived value in the

CDO role and how “by virtue of your role, or identity, you have sort of been the go to person [for

DEI].” This is particularly true for female women of color in CDO roles who not only experience tokenism and navigating difficult and cold spaces, but also had to serve as the “guiding light” for

DEI (Nixon, 2017). For example, while discussing being included on the president’s cabinet, one

CDO stated:

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You know I’m the most senior African American woman on campus, but does that mean

I feel included everyday. . . . I’m the only woman of color sitting around the table, um,

the cabinet table. And I think, and, also probably the youngest person around the table if

not, you know, about the same age as one of my other colleagues. So, you know, that has

significant implications, you know, when you are constantly, you know—even in your

own space, let alone trying to act on behalf of the needs of a whole place, but—not

feeling like you even are seen as an equal player in the mix of what makes the institution

successful, I think that has significant negative implications on the ability of the position

to be successful.

Just because the organization has more people of color, does nt mean the organizational mindset

has shifted, it can still operate in a predominantly majority-centric framework. Even for a CDO

whose role was to influence DEI, they did not always feel included or welcome in the space or

feel the role is valued, but that does not mean the having some of color in the role is not valued.

Representative bureaucracy is a theory within the field of public administration used to

discuss organizational outcomes and postulates that a heterogenous administration produces

higher quality results, reflects broader social values, and incorporates more diverse constituency

perspectives into their decision making. People within an organization and the general public look for their representation within the administration and believe they will be served by a bureaucrat or administrator who values and represents their interests (Pitts, 2005).

Smith (2015) echoed the same for diversity, that SLT need to be diverse if they are going

to be truly responsive to the needs of campus, which did not mean just having someone of the

minority in the CDO role as the only minority SLT. By addressing the structural inequities of

dominant leadership, it infuses awareness and opportunity or dialogue around race, but also

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opens the door for minority leadership to be infused within the organization. It is not just enough to bring in people of color to the workforce, there needs to be and understanding and addressing the fundamental obstacles that are faced in the organization—especially if systems, policies, and

procedures are created around a dominant White narrative.

Having people of color in leadership roles helped one organization infuse a more

progressive and wholistic understanding of race and culture not only through the leadership, but

throughout the organization. The CDO at institution C felt that because of their characteristics as a “first generation, poor inner-city Black kid” it brought life experience to their role and work.

They could understand the complexities that students at their university were facing. They also felt that because of their diversity work there are more students of color stepping into roles they wouldn’t normally undertake, such as a Black female SGA president and a provost who has a

heritage in a Native American tribe, “I’ve got two African American women with Ph.Ds that are

executives, my associate vp and my assistant vp. Uh, associate dean in community sciences. We

just hired a new dean of our vet school, which started Tuesday.” There is still limited empirical

work on representative theory of leadership, though Cullen (2015) has explored the issue of

White people serving in CDO roles, but there is a greater need to see how representation impacts

if a CDO of color promotes racial equity within PWI or gives credibility to the CDO. The theory

of representative bureaucracy emphasizes people want to see themselves reflected through

society and the people who speak for them, and this research provide some foundation that it

might be influential for credibility and internal legitimacy.

Takeaway: Resources

The third takeaway is providing the CDO with necessary and comparable resources.

Williams and Wade-Golden (2013) discussed the importance of properly supporting CDO’s with

172 and through institutional resources. Smith (2015) emphasized the importance of DEI being bolstered through the direct and equitable apportionment of resources. These resources include human staffing, financial, physical space and office, and technological space like on websites and communication. Not all colleges and universities can commit significant resources financial resources in the millions of dollars to CDO work, the resources they do commit should be comparable among the SLT. While salaries and office space count in resource allocation, there should also be designated, unrestricted funds for incorporating DEI into student life, programs and events, faculty and staff training and development, curriculum, and hiring committees. This not only ensures the success of diversity work; but it also communicates that DEI efforts are as vitally important to the university as technology, athletics, research, etc. As one CDO put it “we figured out institutional integration with technology we should figure it out with DEI.” Providing a CDO with not only the necessary resources but also robust support reframes the CDO and DEI as a strategic priority (Williams & Wade-Golden, 2012). The perceived credibility of the CDO can also be enhanced with increased organizational resources. This also frames the credibility of the CDO role and their messaging that no longer is DEI on the periphery, but an integral aspect of daily operations. Aligning the CDO with resource acquisition and strategic priorities not only advances the DEI work, it also provides credibility to the CDO role.

Takeaway: Diversity Work

The final takeaway is the inclusive nature of the diversity work. Diversity is not a one person, or one position, job. The DEI work cannot be done in isolation (Smith, 2012; Williams &

Wade-Golden, 2013). The misconstruction of the diversity work that it was solely up to the CDO leads not only to misinterpretation of the role, but also a lack of support, and lack of acceptance

(Ahmed, 2012). When a college or university only focuses on the small “d” diversity and

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neglects the larger big “D” diversity and social change, the university is not really impacting

diversity.

For institutions, it is the support of executive-leadership, adequate resources allocation, and credibility from internal constituents that lead to inclusive and collaborative environments, which support diversity, equity, and inclusion. While a CDO does play a critical role in helping a university coordinate and define its diversity priorities and objectives, for a university to holistically influence and impact their campus climate for diversity, it cannot be the sole

responsibility for the CDO, and it can merely be for the optics (Parker, 2015, 2020; Smith, 2015;

Williams & Wade-Golden, 2013). Training, development, research and service is an important part of DEI permeating culture—and also a resource is part of the vital human resources needed.

Creating “grassroots” networks and on the ground coalitions of diversity gadflies and allies not only distributes the workload, but when combined with the leadership of the CDO, strengthens the commitment, capacity, and critical infrastructure (Ahmed, 2012; LePeau, 2018; LePeau et. al., 2019; Smith, 2015). However, relying too much on certain individuals and committed practitioners leave the work to be abdicated by everyone else (Parker, 2015, 2020; Williams &

Wade-Golden, 2013). A CDO should be established as the champion for the diversity work, but when the diversity “work” is internalized and operationalized, that is what “moves the needle” on DEI.

One thing I did capture in a memo was that the CDOs perceived everyone, leadership, students, faculty, staff, etc., presumably within the institutional context, to know what “diversity work” is, yet unable to define it, resulting in the “work” being both ubiquitous and unattainable. I do not know if that is why the “diversity work” seems so formidable to some because they do not feel like they will ever reach a satisfactory place. This may result in campus folks feeling as

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though the work is never done. Smith (2015) referred to this as ever evolving and dynamic

nature of the disequilibrium of diversity. That even a campus who engages in serious and

constructive efforts to address DEI, there will still be gaps, external and internal pressures, and

crisis that leave the leadership confounded. Bias incidents will still happen, activism will still be

episodic, changes will still be made—but a campus and SLT who has strategically engaged in

embedding DEI into every aspect of their institution and culture, will have a more advanced set of tools with which to work.

Implications for Future Research

The dilemma with any research study is that it cannot encompass everything. There were aspects of this study I hoped in my initial design that I could address including campus climate, more focus on the internal constituency, and relationship between representation CDO and efficacy. Trying to tackle all of these aspects would have muddied the waters and extended this research further. However, it does leave room for future research. As mentioned throughout this research study, organizational sciences and higher education have lacked integration, particularly around the concept of internal legitimacy.

One thing that should be explored, but I lacked the time and the resources, was to use this information to ask the university faculty and staff constituents and stakeholders about their perception of the diversity work happening on their campus, the legitimacy of the CDO, and the

CDO’s credibility. This is clearly the next step in identifying the components of internal organizational legitimacy. Anecdotally, articles and stories are expressing that what CDO’s are doing is impactful, and even our analytics and data might say as much, but numbers can only provide a small view of a larger picture (Alvarez, 2020). It would be interesting to hear how the stakeholders view the CDO role, compared with how the CDO believes the stakeholders see their

175 role. As well, how are things hindering CDO impact on campus climate—what are things that might move the needle forward. This could be carried out through a larger scale survey asking about CDO effectiveness on campus climate.

In addition to increased resource exchange with the internal environment, how does having a CDO expand the resource exchange with the external environment. Several articles have been cited about the importance of hiring a CDO after a racially and socially heightened experiences, but what about those colleges and universities who already had a CDO. How is the resource exchange with the external environment impacted with the inclusion of CDO? Austin &

Jones (2016) referenced that particularly stakeholder influence, the need responsive and relevant to an external world for economic purposes, expanded a university’s social obligations. They give the example that government and/or grant funding might be contingent on the structural diversity and the actual number of students of color enrolled at an institution, and this would drive their organizational obligations (Austin & Jones, 2016). The question to dive into is do those external environments care that there is a CDO? As well, what can higher education learn from the corporate sector in the inclusion of a CDO into their organizational structure and its relationship with external legitimacy and resource exchange.

The study of organizational legitimacy in higher education is going to expand and be increasingly important as colleges and universities become more consumeristic in nature. A 2016 story in The Atlantic explored that higher education is becoming a public commodity and, therefore, students, parents, and society are viewing higher education from consumer lens

(Wong, 2016). This “commodification of higher education” was the initial enticement to study the legitimacy of CDO in organizational structure. One avenue of future research would be to study how the incorporation of a CDO influences the admissions applications of students of

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color. Do students of color view the college or university with more legitimacy because there is a

CDO or not.

My literature review discussed the importance of incorporating diversity, learning from, and being around others who are different. In “The People Like Us” episode of the NPR (2020)

podcast Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam discussed “how identities shape health and educational success.” The episode discussed the real-life implications for health and education of having people of color paired with doctors and teachers who were people of color. One of the guests was Constance Lindsay, who researched same-race student-teacher pairings in educational outcomes. She identified what she believed to be a role model effect as an explanation of why

Black teachers increased the educational attainment of Black students, particularly for young

Black males from disadvantaged backgrounds. Yet, what was found in this podcast and in some of the research, is that there are still higher outcomes with race-pairing. What does that mean for higher education? I believe it means that we need to increase the pipeline and reduce barriers for people of color to enter into higher education both in administration and faculty, so that in turn, they can go out and become teachers, doctors, nurses, business leaders, etc., and continue to impact society. It was also interesting that race-pairings were linked with success measures, either to take health advice or to succeed in the classroom, but that creativity and innovation were higher with a diverse pool of perspectives.

It also shows that as much as its important to have diverse perspectives at the table, its far more impactful for people to see themselves (i.e., role-model effect and representative bureaucracy) in positions of power and influence—as well as faculty and staff to learn from and interact with. Work by Nixon (2017) and Fulton (2019) believed that these positions can help position an organization to help address DEI internally, as well as externally, but they help

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address the obstacle and barriers minority professionals face in achieving positions of authority

and SLT. In fact, Maitra (2007) did a study on the women in VP roles and one of the findings

was the correlation between race and entrance into the VP role, meaning that race could

influence access to the roles, and potentially for women of color, CDO roles were often their first

and only access to SLT. This further emphasizes the need for structural sustainability for the

CDO position and to further examine the question of representative bureaucracy and credibility.

Does the identity and personal characteristic of CDO would lend itself to greater legitimacy with

an external social environment, but would it also lend itself to greater internal legitimacy?

Finally, an important topic that was mentioned by a CDO, but not expressly studied, was

wellness. While this research did not ask any explicit questions with regards to CDO mental and

physical wellness, I would be remised if I did not include this as future research. This was particularly important because when I asked one CDO what they believed was important to study for the future of this role, they mentioned:

One of the things we didn’t touch on was wellness. I think it’s important for CDOs to

think about is wellness. You coming into jobs and working 12, 14-15 hours. The work is

still gotta be there and learn to do 8-9 hours and checking in and realize the work is still

going to be there tomorrow. The president didn’t say you know, I want you to move the

campus forward and I need you working 16 hours a day, but I didn’t have anyone to tell

me that and so now I feel like I have an obligation to share that with others. You know do

your eight/nine hours of work and checking in, so, you know.

This construct of wellness would be important to examine among CDOs within the realm of doing the diversity work and if this leads to CDO burnout.

Conclusion

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Higher Education has been largely insulated from organizational studies that examine

structure, motives, legitimacy, and even decision making. In an interview with University of

Michigan CDO Robert Sellers and Robin Means Coleman, vice president and associate provost

for diversity at Texas A&M University in College Station, Alvarez (2020) discussed the

historical roots that higher education has with slavery, systemic oppression, and institutionalized

racism. However, as calls for increased accountability to the public, students, faculty, and staff

that are served by colleges and universities it was all but certain that these studies would emerge.

For centuries the academy has been a self-regulating institution where norms and values are perpetuated through outdated means of shared governance and faculty control. The means and methods that served higher education during its inception have long needed to be addressed, particularly organizational structure and governance.

Doing the diversity work is more than just the boxes that we are checking off for diversity, it is the intentional addition of inclusion and equity into the everyday work. The goal of the diversity work for the CDO is always to effect change, to “move the needle,” and to

change the systems from the inside.

But the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion goes much farther than compositional

diversity. . . . That’s the job of the CDO—to shift the discourse from enrolling African

Americans, enrolling Latinx students, to serving them. (And the CDO’s job doesn’t just

deal with racial diversity; we’re also working on issues of gender, ability, neurodiversity,

and every sort of identity position.) That’s the harder job. (Alvarez, 2020, para. 17)

We need the CDO, we need them in the room, we need them at the table, we need them in spaces

to be consistently including DEI in pedagogy, curriculum, teaching, learning, student life,

179 everything, we need them there. But we also need colleges and universities to take ownership of their own DEI by making it a priority for everyone not just the CDO.

In conclusion, for a CDO at a PWI to have organizational legitimacy, and truly impact that diversity work, they must be structurally sustainable and creditable. The CDO position structures must be embedded within executive level reporting lines to the president and require the visible and vocal support of the institution’s leadership. This will be critical to allow the position to survive and thrive the changing of the times and be adapting to what’s going on around them—to change course or directions and to truly move the needle on diversity.

My research, combined with existing literature, demonstrates that CDO legitimacy is tied to structure and credibility. Pulling from the organizational theories of resources dependence theory (RDT), institutional theory (IT), and source credibility theory, I conclude that for a CDO to obtain internal organizational legitimacy the CDO must (a) be structured appropriately at the executive-level, (b) provided comparable resources to their executive-level counterparts, and (c) have credibility particularly among faculty. These three aspects give the CDO internal legitimacy. The internal legitimacy of the CDO affords them greater resources to shapes the big

“D” diversity work at their university. The more a CDO shapes the university around diversity, equity, and inclusion, the more it “moves the needle” on social justice. Those three concepts diversity, equity, and inclusion have to always travel together to move the needle.

180

Epilogue

When I started this, the political divide was not as palpable. Even when I did my interviews, the level of negative and hateful rhetoric was not as abundant as it is now in 2020 pre-presidential election, and so part of diversity work is acknowledging this. I could have gone back and reworked my introduction, but would that have changed anything, by weaving in current landscape? As I finished up writing this dissertation, I sat in the middle of 2020, one of the weirdest and newsworthy years I have been alive. We are in the middle of a global pandemic that indiscriminately chooses its victims but has overwhelming impacted Black Americans.

According to the CDC, the hospitalization rate for Black Americans is 4.7 times higher than it is for White persons and the death rate is 2.1 times than White people. It should be but in the

United States a person’s race and ethnicity “risk markers for other underlying conditions that impact health”—meaning that lower socioeconomic status, access to affordable and quality health care that understands the needs and culture of Black Americans, and that most have increased exposure because they are frontline, critical, and essential infrastructure workers, meaning they do not have jobs that afford them the luxury of working from home. They work in farms, factories, food service, sanitation, transportation, or healthcare that provided direct and increased duration of exposure (Centers for Disease Control, 2020).

And in the middle of all this were the murders of Ahmaud Arbury, Breanna Taylor, and

George Floyd, and the needless shooting of among others. They were murders that we watched happen—we could see with our own eyes. There were public outcries and for a brief moment, everyone was against racism and against murder. Organizations put out statements of diversity and organizations rallied around Black people in solidarity. Organizations outside of higher education began creating CDOs. Professional sports teams, professional sports leagues,

181 fraternities and sororities, even grocery chains began looking at the diversity of their organizations, the representation they have in their upper management and administration, and the messages they are explicitly and implicitly conveying.

And something interesting happened, particularly around higher education—there were three instances of incoming college freshman, scholarship athletes—who posted outright racist remarks, and even called themselves racists, and schools rescinded their admission and scholarship. The organization stood behind the diversity statement they made publicly. And while I know this is about higher education, I feel I need to include this example. The New

Orleans Saints made a very lengthy and specific public comment on the importance of fighting for justice, inclusion, and actions that advance social justice—then almost in the same breathe—

Drew Brees, star quarterback, made a public comment in one part denouncing racism and privilege but in the next commented about the disgrace of Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the flag, in the middle of public discourse about the entire reason for the kneeling—to bring awareness to police brutality and racial injustice.

I say these things because hundreds of organizations have made very public statements about the intolerance for hate, bigotry, and racism, yet only a handful backed up their public statements with resources and a plan for change. On the heels of very public statements of racial and social justice organizations will be asked to back their words, or their lack of words, with action. The same was true in 2019 when the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals was recalled. Institutions put out public statements of support were meant to elicit support and recommitment to diversity and called on public accountability but lacked it entirely. In fact, according to Squire et. al (2019) most of the statements did not even call out the issue DACA students were facing. What those states related to DACA, and now Black Lives Matter, reaffirm

182

is that organizations, not just higher education, are engaged in sometime called it performative

action. Do organizations make a statement of solidarity that may not be intended to live by or

uphold, from the sheer public pressure to do so, and then do they uphold the social contract that they made publicly?

Despite making public statements of good, most organizations are likely unwilling to engage in advocacy work, and are really meant to reaffirm the presence of White institutional influence (Squire et al., 2019). Organizational statements are not worth the paper they are written on if they do not have the performative action behind their words. Do the organizations actively acknowledge, advocate, and address issues of systemic oppression and institutional racism; and when it comes time for action will they act in line with their pubic statement? Will they also commit to keeping up the fire of the movement when the spark of it fades?

We have to continue to keep pressure on our organizations to do better—especially if they say they will—where is the accountability to the public they promised solidarity. So, what

does the current moment mean for the CDO and movement? I do not believe that the CDO role

will go away, in fact, quite the opposite. Through this research and conversations with others, I

believe that these positions will begin to appear not just with more frequency in higher

education, but across multiple landscapes including more K-12, corporate, and government agencies. Racial injustice is not going to be solved with a hashtag. Thousands of statements have been made about the need for racial justice from organizations across the spectrum. Just as much as a CDO could be a window dressing in higher education, these statements could be window dressings for these organizations. What will continue to move the needle on real, transformative diversity work, is having these CDO positions legitimatized within every organization with

183 structurally sustainability to address DEI across all aspects of our lives. The public keeps receipts and we are going know if you kept your end of the bargain.

184

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Appendix A

Colleges and Universities Who Currently Participate in NADOHE

Allegheny College + St. Olaf College Arizona State University Stanford University Arkansas State University - Jonesboro State University of New York at Albany Armstrong Atlantic State University (main campus) Association of American Medical Colleges State University of New York, Albany Babson College Susquehanna University Ball State University Syracuse University Berklee College of Music ^ Tarrant County College District Buffalo State College Tennessee Board of Regents California Polytechnic State University Tennessee State University California State University San Marcos Texas A&M University California State University, Fresno Texas A&M University-Commerce Calvin College Texas Tech University Capella University The Citadel - The Military College of SC Case Western Reserve University The College at Brockport College of Charleston The Illinois Mathematics and Science College of Southern Nevada Academy College of the Holy Cross The Ohio State University College of William & Mary The Pennsylvania State University Colorado State University The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey Community College of Baltimore County The University of Akron Cornell University The University of North Carolina at Dartmouth College Greensboro DePaul University The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Des Moines University Tiffin University Duke University Towson University East Carolina University Truckee Meadows Community College Eastern Virginia Medical School Tulane University Fashion Institute of Technology Union College Gadsden State Community College University of Arizona George Mason University University of California, Irvine George Washington University University of California, Los Angeles Georgetown University University of California-Berkeley Georgia Institute of Technology University of California-Davis Georgia State University University of California-San Diego Gettysburg College University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Gonzaga University University of Connecticut * Grinnell College University of Delaware Hamilton College University of Denver ^ (est.) Harvard University ^ University of Florida Harvey Mudd College University of Georgia Henderson State University University of Houston

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Hillsborough Community College University of Houston-Downtown Houston Community College University of Idaho ILIFF School of Theology University of IL, Office of the Chancellor Indiana State University University of Iowa Indiana University ^ (est.) University of Kansas Iowa State University University of Kentucky IUPUI, Office of Diversity, Equity and University of La Verne Inclusion University of Louisville Ivy Tech Community College University of Maryland James Madison University University of Maryland University College John Carroll University University of Massachusetts Boston Kennesaw State University University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Kent State University University of Missouri Marist College University of Nebraska-Lincoln Miami University ^ University of Nevada, Las Vegas Michigan State University University of New Hampshire Middlebury College University of New Mexico Milwaukee Area Technical College University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Minnesota State University, Mankato University of North Carolina Wilmington Mississippi State University University of North Texas Missouri State University University of Oregon Montgomery College University of Puget Sound National Collegiate Athletic Association University of Rochester (NCAA) University of Tennessee North Carolina State University at Raleigh University of Texas at Arlington North Dakota State University University of Texas at Austin Northern Arizona University University of Texas at Dallas Oakton Community College University of the Rockies Oklahoma State University ^ University of Virginia* Olivet College University of Washington^ (est.) Pennsylvania College of Technology University of Wisconsin-Madison + Point Loma Nazarene University University of Wisconsin-Platteville Portland Community College Valdosta State University Princeton University Valencia College Providence College Vanderbilt University Purdue University Villanova University Red Rocks Community College Virginia Commonwealth University Rice University Virginia Community College System Rochester Institute of Technology Virginia Tech University Santa Clara University Wake Forest University Savannah State University Washington State University ^ School of the Art Institute of Chicago Western Kentucky University Smith College Western Michigan University Southeast Community College Wheelock College Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Whitman College St. Joseph’s University

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Winston Salem State University Wright State University

^ listed in Williams & Wade-Golden (2007) emergent vs. established ^ (est.) + listed in Cherenfant & Crawley (2012) * Listed in all three Source: http://www.nadohe.org/current-institutional-members

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Appendix B

Semi- Structured Interview Protocol

(Read to participant) Thank you again for your participation in my study on Chief Diversity

Officers at PWIs and creating legitimacy within the organizational structure of the institution.

Your participation will assist me in developing a deeper understanding of how the Chief

Diversity Officer is incorporated into the organizational structure. This interview will take

approximately 60-90 minutes to complete and your answers from this study will be confidential.

A reminder that this interview is being recorded for transcription purposes, you will have access to the transcription for verification, and that participation in this study is voluntary and you may

end at any time.

BACKGROUND

1. Can you please give your “name” (Pseudonym) and What is your title at the institution?

2. Tell me a little about yourself and how you became ______at your

institution?

3. How long have you been serving as ______?

4. How long has your position been at the institution?

a. Can you provide some background and context to your position at the institution?

5. What is your position within the organizational structure?

a. Do you report to the President, within the cabinet?

b. How does your position interact with the campus?

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ROLE

6. Describe your role at the intuition?

7. Who do you serve at the institution?

8. How do you believe others in the institution would describe your role?

9. What are the benefits of your position to the institution? Do you feel the institution

supports your position?

RESOURCES

10. What resources does the CDO need to get the work of diversity done on your campus?

11. Tell me about what resources does your position have at its disposal? Do you have

organizational resources; human, financial, capital?

12. What resources do you believe this position needs to be effective at enacting diversity

related initiatives? How do those resources compare to other entities on campus?

13. If you have resources, how do you acquire them? If you don’t, how do you get the work

done that needs to be done?

INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT AND LEGITIMACY

14. Do you feel that people outside your institution value your diversity work? Do faculty

and staff at your institution value your diversity work?

15. Do you feel that you have social credibility with the faculty and staff at your campus,

why or why not? If not, what would get you that social credibility?

16. Does the CDO position give you legitimacy on your campus? How do you know you

have legitimacy? How does this influence your work?

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DIVERSITY

17. how does your institution define diversity?

18. Do you feel the institution supports diversity?

19. What more do you think could be done to create inclusive environments for diversity?

How does your position fit into that?

20. Is your position impacting diversity on your campus?

21. What do you see as the future for the CDO position?

22. Any further comments or insights you would like to add to the discussion?

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Appendix C

Study Procedures and Protocol

IRB STUDY #1804059419

INDIANA UNIVERSITY STUDY INFORMATION SHEET FOR

How Do Chief Diversity Officers Create Organizational Legitimacy in the University Structure?

You are invited to participate in a research study of Chief Diversity Officers and organizational structure. You were selected as a possible subject because of your role as Chief Diversity Officer, as well as your institutions profile, size, research level, and student demographics. I ask that you read this form and ask any questions you may have before agreeing to be in the study.

The study is being conducted by Megan Bottoms, doctoral candidate in the Higher Education Administration program in the School of Education at Indiana University, Bloomington, under the direction and supervision of Principle Investigator, and Dissertation Chair, Dr. Lori Patton- Davis.

STUDY PURPOSE

The purpose of this study is to understand how the role of the Chief Diversity Office (CDO) creates legitimacy within the organizational structure of a large, public, university. Legitimacy is defined as the ability to acquire, exchange, and use human, financial, and capital resources for organizational purposes. I would like to use this study to explore how the organizational structure helps or hinders the legitimacy of the CDO work.

PROCEDURES FOR THE STUDY:

If you agree to be in the study, you will do the following things:

One 60-90 minute interview, with predetermined questions, either in person or via Skype or teleconference. The interview will be recorded and transcribed. A 30 minute follow up interview may be requested to discern any additional information. During the interview, the interviewer may request supplemental documentation that expands on the acquisition, exchange, and use of human, financial, and capital resources, including formal and informal organizational charts, budgets (if available), list of facilities and buildings they oversee, calendars of related programs and events, and documents related to the creation of the position (if available), including job descriptions, that are not available publicly on the organizations website.

CONFIDENTIALITY

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Efforts will be made to keep your personal information confidential. We cannot guarantee absolute confidentiality. Your personal information may be disclosed if required by law. Your identity will be held in confidence in reports in which the study may be published. Transcriptions and voice recordings will be stored on the secure IU Box under an individual account to which the researcher is the sole user. The transcriptions will be available for participants to view prior to publication for accuracy of content and intention. The transcriptions and voice recordings will be held for a minimum of three years and maximum of five years to allow the researcher to complete required research, after which the voice recordings will be deleted from the secure folder.

Organizations that may inspect and/or copy your research records for quality assurance and data analysis include groups such as the study investigator and his/her research associates, the Indiana University Institutional Review Board or its designees, and (as allowed by law) state or federal agencies, specifically the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP), etc., who may need to access research records. Participants may also decline sharing any private or internal documents requested.

PAYMENT

You will not receive payment for taking part in this study.

CONTACTS FOR QUESTIONS OR PROBLEMS

For questions about the study, contact the researcher Megan Bottoms, [email protected], 317-965-1758

For questions about your rights as a research participant or to discuss problems, complaints or concerns about a research study, or to obtain information, or offer input, contact the IU Human Subjects Office at (812) 856-4242 or (800) 696-2949. You may also email [email protected]

VOLUNTARY NATURE OF STUDY

Taking part in this study is voluntary. You may choose not to take part or may leave the study at any time. Leaving the study will not result in any penalty or loss of benefits to which you are entitled. Your decision whether or not to participate in this study will not affect your current or future relations with Indiana University, or the researcher.

SOLICITATION EMAIL

Subject: Dissertation Study on Chief Diversity Officer, Requesting your Participation Good afternoon,

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My name is Megan Bottoms and I am a doctoral student in the Higher Education Administration program at Indiana University, Bloomington. I am currently completing my dissertation on Chief Diversity Officers and their position in the university structure.

I am contacting you today to request your participation in my study. I am requesting approximately 90 minutes of your time via teleconference to conduct an interview. The interview will be recorded and transcribed and available for review. It may be determined that more information is needed. The interviewer may request supplemental documentation that expands on the acquisition, exchange, and use of human, financial, and capital resources, including formal and informal organizational charts, budgets (if available), list of facilities and buildings they oversee, calendars of related programs and events, and documents related to the creation of the position (if available), including job descriptions, that are not available publicly on the organization’s website.

If at any point you do not want to participate, you may withdraw from the study by communicating through an email that you no longer wish to participate. Participation in the research is voluntary and participants can choose not to complete the interview at any time before, during, or after the interview.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you regarding your participation in this research study.

CONFIDENTIALITY: Efforts will be made to keep your personal information confidential. We cannot guarantee absolute confidentiality. Your personal information may be disclosed if required by law. Your identity will be held in confidence in reports in which the study may be published. Transcriptions and voice recordings will be stored on the secure IU Box under an individual account to which the researcher is the sole user. The transcriptions will be available for participants to view prior to publication for accuracy of content and intention. The transcriptions and voice recordings will be held for a minimum of three years and maximum of five years to allow the researcher to complete required research, after which the voice recordings will be deleted from the secure folder.

Resume

Education Doctorate of Education | December 2020 | INDIANA UNIVERSITY – BLOOMINGTON, IN School of Education: Higher Education Administration Kelley School of Business: Organizational Behavior & Human Resources Management Dissertation Topic: Chief diversity officers organizational legitimacy and their incorporation into the structure of predominantly white institutions

Master of Education | MAY 2008 | UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE – LOUISVILLE, KY Counseling and Educational Psychology and Personnel Services/College Student Personnel Dean’s List and Dean’s Scholar 2006-2008

BACHELOR OF ARTS & SCIENCE | MAY 2006 | MARIAN UNIVERSITY – INDIANAPOLIS, IN Psychology with Honors; Pre-Law Concentration Dean’s List 2002, 2005, & 2006

COLLEGIATE TEACHING EXPERIENCE Proposed an associate’s degree and certificate in Sport and Entertainment Management

Member of the Riverside City College Curriculum Committee and presented faculty flex workshops on Generation Gaps in Education

Preparing Future Faculty Summit, Focus on the Future: Opportunities and Challenges in the Next Generation University. Hosted by Indiana University Graduate School (Spring 2016)

Completed The Course Development Institute at Indiana University. Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning

Riverside City College; EDU 51: Leadership Development Studies Creator, 8-week undergraduate course (course catalog since Fall 2019)

Chapman University, CA; LEAD 301: Theory & Practice of Leadership Instructor, 16-week undergraduate (Spring 2020)

Indiana University C750: Curriculum Development in Higher Education Assistant Instructor; 16 week Doctoral Course (Fall 2016)

Environmental Theory and Assessment Assessment Mentor/ Assistant Instructor (Fall 2015) 2nd year Masters level course in the Higher Education and Student Affairs Program

LEAD IU 495: Advanced Organizational Leadership Instructor; 8-week Undergraduate course; Fall and Spring (Fall 2011- Fall 2013)

LEAD IU 207: Leadership Training Curriculum Creation & Co-Supervisor (Fall 2011- Fall 2012) Responsible for curriculum creation, oversight and evaluating the course implementation by 10 Masters level graduate instructors.

LEAD IU 207: Leadership Training Instructor; 8-Week Undergraduate Course; Fall and Spring (Spring 2009 – Fall 2011)

LEAD IU 495: Leadership Essentials Co-Instructor; 8-week Undergraduate Course (Fall 2008)

University of Louisville ECPY 355: Developing Campus Leaders Teachers Assistant (Spring 2008) General Studies 101: Introductory course to the College of Arts and Sciences Teacher’s Assistant (Fall 2007)

PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS

Beatty, C. C., McElderry, J. A., Bottoms, M. and Gray, K. (2019), Resisting and Responding to Racism Through Fraternity and Sorority Involvement. Student Services, 2019: 99-108. doi:10.1002/ss.20297

Bottoms, M. & Holbrook, R. (2018). Missing: Performance Management. ACUHO-I Talking Stick. July-August. pg. 29-30

Bottoms, M. & Joshel, J. (2016). Leading individuals through organizational change. ACUHO-I Talking Stick. November- December. pg. 28-30

Bottoms, M. (2016). If they come, We will build it: The creation of the Office of Afro-American Affairs at Indiana University. Journal of the Student Personnel Association at Indiana University. May. pg. 49-62

Beatty, C., Bottoms, M., & Gray, K. (2011). Engaging students of color on campus programming boards. ACUI Bulletin, May. pg 34-40

Beatty, C., & Bottoms, M. (2009). Team advising a college union programming board. ACUI Bulletin, September. pg 36-41

PROFESSIONAL ADVISING & WORK EXPERIENCE Assistant Professor/ Coordinator Student Activities Office of Student Life - Riverside City College – Riverside, CA – February 2017 to Present Oversee the Office of Student Activities and provide assistance to students, faculty, and staff on matters regarding clubs and organizations, oversee the free speech zones, and approve documentation regarding campus events, field trips, and vendor registrations. Contribute to the Vice President of Student Services strategic plan and initiatives, and provide assessment and documentation of goals. Advise and train 25 members of the Associated Students of Riverside City College (ASRCC) Executive Cabinet, Senate, and Supreme Court. Served as a member of the Vice President for Student Services Leadership Team and advocate for students on issues related to student life.

Assistant Director of Residential Life Residential Programs and Services - Indiana University – Bloomington, IN – May 2013 to February 2017 Supervised 6 Masters-degree professional staff in the oversight and management of 3 residence centers between 1500- 500 students. Oversaw programmatic, training, and development of ~220 resident assistants, 30 Graduate Assistants, and 35 masters-level professional staff that serve 1200+ residents with 11 Learning Communities and 15 Thematic Communities within the Residential Life. Served on the Director of Residential Life Leadership Team and as a member of the Residential Life Assessment Team. Trained by the Office of Student Ethics as a Sexual Misconduct Hearing Officer and adjudicated sexual assault cases. Represented Residential Programs and Services on the Vice President of Student Affairs Incident Response Team. Established a new learning community for 30 rising sophomores and juniors that supports their unique student needs. Conceived the Academic Peer Advocate program placing 2-3 students into the residence to address academic needs of students.

Program Coordinator for Activities and Events Indiana Memorial Union - Indiana University – Bloomington, IN – June 2008 to April 2013 Operated within a shared governance, or student/staff partnership, model for the Union Board student programmers at Indiana University. Advised 13 student programming and 3 Executive Directors with specific programming needs for over 200 programs a year for 40,000+ students, and the governance of the 100+ year old Indiana Memorial Union. Directly supervised and evaluate 2 para-professional Graduate Assistant-Program Advisors & a practicum student in their responsibilities advising committees and programs every year. Acted as a conflict arbitrator, student advocate, adjudicator, and/or disciplinarian between students and other individuals as needed. Negotiated, reviewed, and processed contracts and service agreements with performers and event and talent management agencies. Communicated, interpret, and execute Indiana University policies and procedures to 16 student programmers & their programs. Managed and monitored a $750,000 student-fee generated programming budget & a $3,000 individual programming budget. Compiled the Activities and Events Department Annual Report. Represented the Activities and Events Office team on various campus-wide committees including, but not limited to; Student Leadership Advisory Council, Learning Outcomes Committee, Lead IU classes, & Greek Assessment & Awards.

Volunteer Professional Development Experience Indiana University – Bloomington, IN – June 2008 to February 2017 Attended 2016 NASPA Mid-Managers Institute in Knoxville, TN on the nomination of the Residential Programs & Services Executive Director. Participate in a 6-week summer course on assessment of curriculum, programs, courses, and institutions offered by Trudy Banta. Attend the Course Development Institute coordinated by the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning and Kelley School of Business. Conducted a benchmarking report for the student affairs unit of the new Marian University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Graduate Assistant; Student Activities Board

Office of Student Activities – University of Louisville – Louisville, KY – August 2006 to June 2008 Advised 14 students on 7 committees with programming needs on approximately 100 events for over 20,000 students. Communicated with and managed approximately 150 student volunteers. Implemented procedures for event registrations and evaluations submittal and archive. Created and maintained student learning outcomes for the student programmers. Assisted in monitoring the Student Activities Board budget of approximately $200,000

SPORT AND ENTERTAINMENT MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE Event Services Specialist Event Management Services – Indiana University, Bloomington – Bloomington, IN – August 2012 to January 2017 Provided exceptional customer service variety of exciting and historic events at Indiana University, through both the IU Auditorium and IU Athletics. Provided +1 customer service as an usher, ticket taker, greeter, guest relations, and suite hostess for IU Athletic events. Directed a team of student-workers as an area supervisor for a variety of events, particularly weddings and banquets. Experienced in ADA accommodations for athletic and other leisure events; as well as lectures, concerts, and theatre

Athletics Compliance Intern University Athletics Department – University of Louisville – Louisville, KY – May 2007 – August 2007 Advanced my knowledge of the NCAA Regulations, By-laws, and Clearinghouse Standards. Compiled documents and materials for Compliance meetings with the individual sports teams and coaches

PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE President- Elect California Community College Student Affairs Association (CCCSAA) – Riverside, CA –May 2020 – Present Co-chair the virtual Student Leadership Conference for 1,000 students, advisors, and faculty across the state of California, which entailed recruiting over 40 conference presenters on leadership skills, social justice, advocacy, advising, and mental health. Create and oversee the graduate intern program that will create an educational content for student leadership and development. Assume the role of the president in their absence during meetings, conferences, events, or public meetings.

Membership Director Association of Junior League International – Junior League of Riverside – Riverside, CA –May 2018 to July 2019 Direct the membership initiatives of the local Junior League chapter including growing membership, training, and development

Central Indiana Chapter; President Alumni Association -- Marian University – Indianapolis, IN – April 2010 to December 2014 Provided direction to the 8 members of the CIC council and serve as member of the National Alumni Association. Worked with the Director of Alumni Affairs for the University to brainstorm, plan, and execute alumni events and to engage young donors. Created young alumni programming, like the monthly Third Thursday and alumni tailgates, to reach alumni and encouraging giving. Led discussion of the creation and the initiation of the “Year of the Alumni” marketing initiative

President Student Government Association -- Marian University – Indianapolis, IN – April 2005 to May 2006 Represent approximately 1700 students to Faculty, Staff, Administration, and Board of Trustees. Reorganized the student government structure and Constitution. Attended regular meetings with members of the Board of Trustees and administrators Delivered opening address at New Student Convocation to approximately 400 new students, parents, faculty, staff, administrators, & peers. Managed a $90,000 Student Government budget.

PRESENTATION & PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Holbrook, R. & Bottoms, M. (2015, October) Building your cornfield: Specifics for creating Leadership Councils in Learning Communities. Presentation at the Living Learning Programs Conference. St. Petersburg, FL (could not attend)

Faranesh, L., Bottoms, M., & Banks, M. (2013, October) Risky business of advising greek organizations. Presentation at the annual meeting of the Indiana Student Affairs Association. Bloomington, IN.

Gray, K., Bottoms, M., Beatty, C., & Callahan, A. (2011, March) Engaging students of color on PWI campus programming boards. Presentation at the national meeting of the American College Personnel Association. Baltimore, MD.

Bottoms, M., & Beatty, C. (2010, March). The next generation: Graduate student training through team advising. Presentation at the national meeting of the American College Personnel Association. Boston, MA.

Bottoms, M., & Beatty, C. (2010, February). The missing link to working with first year students. Presentation at the Indiana University First Year Experience Conference. Bloomington, IN.

Bottoms, M.J., Drummer, T.R., Garvey, B., Gray, K.P., & Jones, A.P. (2009, March). The close relationship of supervision: Supervising those who you know. Presentation at the national meeting of the American College Personnel Association. Washington, DC.

Chen, S., Clemens, K., Barbour, C., Meyer, K., Bottoms, M. (2008, February). The divine comity… Easier to understand than Dante! Presentation at the meeting of the College Personnel Association of Kentucky, Louisville, KY.

Bottoms, Megan (2007, October) When to take the steak off your plate: Delegation for student leaders. Presentation for the Indiana University Southeast Leadership Conference, New Albany, IN.

Bottoms, Megan (2006, May) Gender differences in the perception of stress and unhealthy coping behaviors. Presentation at the Marian College Honors Colloquium, Indianapolis, IN

Bottoms, Megan (2006, May) Gender differences in the perception of stress and unhealthy coping behaviors. Presentation at the Butler University Undergraduate Research Conference, Indianapolis, IN.

ACPA 2009 Conference Case Study Participant (New Professionals); ACPA 2010 Conference Case Study Participant (New Professionals); 2008 College Personnel Association of Kentucky Conference Case Study Participant

CERTIFICATIONS & TRAINING EXPERIENCE Level 1 Certified Advisor - ASACA 2016 NASPA Mid Managers Institute, Knoxville, TN Fred Pryor Institute “Dealing with Difficult People” Spring 2016 Interfraternity Institute (IFI) participant 2011 ACUI Indiana Professional Development Seminar (IPDS) Attendee - 2010 Leadershape Cluster Facilitator – Summer 2010 First Aid/CPR/AED Certified StrengthsQuest based educator

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, HONORS, & SOCIETY MEMBERSHIP California Community College Student Affairs Association (CCCSAA) Golden Key Honor Society NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education Pi Lambda Theta North American Society for Sport Management Omicron Delta Kappa- Leadership Honor Society Women Leaders in College Sports Psi Chi - National Psychology Honor Society Junior League of Riverside, CA Kappa Delta Pi- National Education Honor Society Kappa Delta Sorority; Alpha Xi Chapter, University of Louisville Kappa Gamma Pi – National Catholic Honor Society Awarded the Muriel Johnstone Graduate Scholarship by the Kappa Delta Foundation Marian University Distinguished Young Alumni Award Awarded the Mindy Sopher Scholarship by the Kappa Delta Foundation for dedication to Kappa Delta Karen H. Mueller Outstanding Indiana University Student Affairs Staff Member Nominee Marian University Alumni Association Most Distinguished Senior John H Sweeny Spirit of Marian Nominee College Scholar Achievement Academy Who’s Who Among College and University Students First Team Mock Trial- Outstanding Attorney and Witness Awards at Regional Tour Marian University Academic Honors Program

National LeaderShape Institute Attendee Summer 2003