Explain the circumstances in which underrepresented minorities develop the capacity to thrive in the workplace rather than being derailed by discrimination and marginalization.
Positive Organizational Inclusion Scholarship for Equity and Diversity
A Positive Organizational Scholarship Microcommunity
Our aim is to understand how positive states, qualities, relationships, and processes in organizations surface new insights for creating diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces where everyone thrives.
Our Mission
Help organizations to become more “poised”–that is, composed and self-assured–in their efforts to create inclusive organizations that advance equity, promote inclusion, and foster dignity for all underrepresented and marginalized workers.
Our Vision
Develop and disseminate research on the theory, practice, and teaching of diversity, equity, and inclusion using a positive organizational scholarship lens through partnerships with practitioners, development of rigorous scholarship, ongoing events and opportunities to engage with members, and development of curricula for teaching.
Steering Committee
Meet Our Leadership
Courtney L. McCluney is an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior in the ILR School at Cornell University. Her research investigates marginalization or workplace practices, processes, and structures that create disproportionate access to resources for marginalized workers, and strategies that these workers use to navigate and resist marginalization.
Sandra Cha is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Brandeis University’s International Business School. Her research investigates leadership, diversity, identity, and authenticity in 21st-century organizations.
Meg’s research explores positive psychological approaches to diversity, equity and inclusiveness and factors affecting the well-being of marginalized groups. Her most recent research focuses on motivations, strategies, and consequences of allyship in the workplace.
Lumumba Seegars is a PhD Candidate in Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. His research explores collective organizing around race and gender within organizations, organizational efforts to challenge inequality, and how organization members experience these efforts.
Join Us
The POISED microcommunity emerged from the work assembled in Positive Organizing in a Global Society: Understanding and Engaging Differences for Capacity Building & Inclusion (Roberts, Wooten, & Davidson, 2017). This edited volume united thought leadership on the topics of diversity and inclusion through the lens of positive organizational scholarship.
Collectively, the book provides foundational knowledge at micro-, meso-, and macro-levels on the most positive ways to strengthen diverse organizations, and to see diversity as an individual group, relational, and organizational resource.
We invite members to this microcommunity whose work seeks to:
Create equitable and inclusive organizational cultures, structures, and practices that reproduce thriving and flourishing for employees who have been historically marginalized.
Provide insight for how organizations that have stumbled in their efforts to support DEI can learn, grow, and flourish from their experiences.
Discover how leaders and allies partner in DEI efforts to help underrepresented minorities flourish and become their best selves through their work.