There's no doubt that a large part of our identity is tied up with the organizations in which we're enmeshed. One organizational practice that regulates and controls members' identities is giving members an explicit set of guiding values and morals. You can get a sense of SJSU's values from its mission statement, strategic planning, organization charts (where are the faculty and students on these charts?), and other formal documents, which provide both explicit and implicit value statements.
Intersecting identities refers to the idea that social categories such as gender, race, class, age, dis/ability, sexuality, and others combine in complex, fluid, and sometimes contradictory ways. For example, my father is from a working class family and was the first in his family to go to college, much less earn a Ph.D. His background was very different from the students at Cornell University, where he got his first teaching job, but very similar to the students at Delta College, his last teaching job. For him, teaching at Delta was easier and more rewarding than Cornell because he could relate better with the Delta students. Now a retired professor, some aspects of his identity put him in a privileged class (male, highly educated, white, straight), but his age and disability (inoperable esophageal cancer) make him nearly invisible when he goes to the grocery store or the bank.
We all bring multiple identities to our organizational lives. The authors of your text suggest that one strategy for negotiating these multiple identities is to be mindful. Consider the various aspects of your self that you bring to your organizations and how those organizations influence your identities.
~ Professor Cyborg
Week 5: Blog 4
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Web Lecture: Procedural Democracy
I think the main point of this concept is that without it, you cannot have
democracy at all. A profound example of this i...
14 years ago
2 comments:
Very insightful post! It is good to be mindful of everyone you may encounter. You never who who they might be. I live by this saying every day and it has paid off for me on more than one occasion. For example, I was helping a customer with his transaction at the cashiers station and the system crashed. I apologized to the customer and rang up the customer without the use of the computer cash register. I did it by hand so that I would not hold up the customer from going about his day. My reward for doing this was a tip of $10! He just handed it to me and said thank you. That was it! I thought of this as his time was more important to him then the $10. I guess "time is money!"
Especially in casual California, you never know if you're interacting with a CEO or a mail room clerk. Still, as you point out, if people are mindful in their interactions and treat everyone politely and courteously, life in general will go more smoothly. And you might even get rewarded.
It's been interesting to watch as my dad's identity has changed over time. He's a pretty big name in psychology (he worked with Harry Harlow on the mother love experiments in the late 1950s, which are discussed in every intro to psych textbook) and active in the Lansing community. But in the past 6 months his health has taken a pretty dramatic turn for the worse. Physicians tend to treat him based on his illness. Nurses, especially the hospice nurses, treat him with the most respect.
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