Organizing Shared Approaches to Equity Work

Campuses are experimenting with new ways to structure and organize diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work. Existing organizational structures tend to focus either on top-down or vertical ways of organizing DEI work (e.g. chief diversity officer positions) or more horizontally integrated designs such as DEI committees. These structures are limited in their ability to embed the type of culture change necessary to erode entrenched inequities on college and university campuses. Our study identifies organizational structures that are more shared or matrix-like as promising approaches for transforming campus culture. We specifically describe four different models of a more shared organizational design for DEI and discuss the implications of changing structures in this way.