Call for Papers: Understanding Diversity Dynamics in Systems

Abstract

It’s been 70 years since Kurt Lewin began examining the social dynamics underlying discrimination and 50 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the United States. Fifty years ago also marks the inception of National Training Laboratories (NTL) and The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science (JABS). NTL’s mission is “to advance Applied Behavioral Science in the service of social justice, oppression-free societies, and healthy individuals, groups and organizations in the world” (www.ntl. org) and JABS supports NTL’s mission through serving as a publication outlet for the exploration of group dynamics, organization development, and social change (www. jab.sagepub.com). Thus, it is fitting for JABS to house a special issue on Social Equality as it furthers NTL’s, and by extension, JABS’s, commitment to civil rights and continuing the work of Lewin on creating a more socially just society. While much has changed in terms of workplace equality in the past 50 years, with increases in numbers of women and people of color gaining access to places of power where they had formerly been excluded, much remains the same. Despite the election of Barack Obama as the first African American President of the United States, there are still very few women and minorities in senior leadership positions in organizations that hold power (political, government, corporations). For example, in 2014 men held 94.8% of Fortune 500 CEO positions, whereas women held only 5.2% (Catalyst, 2014). In addition, in 2014 Whites held 95% of Fortune 500 CEO positions, whereas people of color (Black, Asian, and Latino) held only 5% (Diversity Inc., 2014). Moreover, when women and people of color are in positions of authority, racial and gender dynamics often undermine leadership and derail organizational initiatives. There has been a great deal of research on understanding the causes of this persistent social inequality in organizational settings. Some of these studies focus on examining individual differences among various social identity groups (e.g., gender differences in 566493 JABXXX10.1177/0021886314566493The Journal of Applied Behavioral ScienceBlock and Noumair research-article2014