1st Edition
Managing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Public Service Organizations A Liberatory Justice Approach
Managing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Public Service Organizations: A Liberatory Justice Approach is a textbook designed to facilitate critical and courageous conversations that recognize our differences, including our privileged and marginalized social identities, and engage readers in the principles and practice of solidarity to transform systems of oppression. Examining dimensions of race, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, and their intersectionality in the context of diverse, multigenerational organizations, this leading-edge new textbook redefines and reimagines the role of public service in fostering meaningful, authentic, sustainable, and transformative change.
While diversity is now a standard topic in books on public personnel and human resource management, authors Rashmi Chordiya and Meghna Sabharwal offer a deeper, nuanced, and reflective understanding of many of the systematic and often covert ways in which marginalized and minoritized groups can face barriers to full and equal participation in decision-making, access to resources, and opportunities for advancement and growth. Taking a holistic, liberatory public service approach, the book explores what it would mean if public service systems were reimagined, and goals aligned and transformed, to serve an “all means all” public.
Other unique features of this book include developing a nuanced understanding of trauma of oppression from neurobiological, sociological, and historical perspectives. This book supports the reader in exploring ways of cultivating individual and organizational competencies and capacities for envisioning and implementing trauma-informed, repair and healing-centered approaches to public service that compassionately center the margins. To encourage learner engagement and to connect theory to practice, this book offers several case studies. Each chapter contains a description of big ideas, big questions, and key concepts and teachings offered in that chapter, as well as chapter summaries and deep dive resources. Throughout the book, the authors offer boxed invitations to pause and use reflective prompts to engage readers with the core concepts and key teachings of the book. Managing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Public Service Organizations is required reading for all current and future public administrators and nonprofit leaders.
Part I: Introduction: Core Concepts 1. Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Liberatory Justice (DEILJ) 2. Understanding Oppression: What It Is, How It Works and How to Interrupt it? Part II: Building Blocks of A Liberatory Public Service Framework 3. Trauma-Informed and Healing-Centered Public Service 4. Nurturing Collectives: Building Capacity for Courageous DEILJ Conversations 5. Cultivating a Liberatory Public Service: Lessons from Social Justice Movement Visions and Frameworks 6. Diffusion of DEILJ Innovations in Public Service Part III: Liberatory Public Service Approach: Applications and Integrations 7. Unravelling Racism and Moving Toward Racial Justice: Part I 8. Unravelling Racism and Moving Toward Racial Justice: Part II 9. Interrupting Sexism, Heteropatriarchy, and Trans Oppression: Moving Toward LGBTQIA+ and Gender Justice 10. Countering Intersectional Ableism and Moving Toward Disability Justice 11. Concluding Reflections: Aspiring for Liberatory Public Service
Biography
Rashmi Chordiya (She | Her) is an associate professor of public administration at Seattle University’s Department of Public Affairs and Nonprofit Leadership, USA. Her research focuses on bridging critical academic scholarship and social justice movement visions and theories to advance the theory and praxis of liberatory justice in public service. She approaches diversity and social justice work from an embodied lens that is traumainformed, repair and healing-centered, and compassionately centering the margins. Her peer-reviewed journal articles are published in prestigious public administration journals.
Meghna Sabharwal is a National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) Fellow and a professor in the public and nonprofit management program, as well as the Associate Provost of Faculty Success at the University of Texas at Dallas, USA. Her extensive research portfolio centers around public human resources management with a particular focus on workforce diversity, equity and inclusion, high skilled immigration, and comparative public human resources. She is the editor-in-chief of the Review of Public Personnel Administration. She is the recipient of several national and international awards.
“This book looks anew at old problems. For the optimist, the book shows the way forward. For the realist, it acknowledges hurdles to be jumped. For the pessimist, it explains liberatory precepts and makes them accessible for discussion.”
Mary E. Guy, University of Colorado Distinguished Professor, USA
“Deep and accessible. Gentle and courageous. This book inspires a renewed commitment to the human-centered public service our communities need and deserve. With loving clarity and great care, Chordiya and Sabharwal illuminate a path for each of us - and the institutions we steward - to see our need for connection, transformation, trust, wholeness, and healing as the building blocks of the future of public service. This uplifting and exciting contribution is a gift!”
Adana Protonentis, MPA, Co-Owner and Director of Liberatory Learning, Kindred Consulting
“Rarely does a book come along that has the power to change everything you know about the public sector. But Chordiya and Sabharwal have done just that. With their thoughtful, thorough, and meaningful words, they offer us the liberatory public service as a way to transform our organizations and ourselves. This is a must read for public servants, students, and faculty in public administration, political science, and criminal justice.”
Stephanie Dolamore, Maryland Developmental Disabilities Council, Maryland, USA
“While we’ve made a lot of progress in studying diversity, this amazing work by Chordiya and Sabharwal is exactly what public administration needs right now to move our field down the path to embracing justice in our teaching and research. It will be transformative, and I cannot wait to adopt it in class.”
Jessica E. Sowa, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy & Administration, University of Delaware, USA
“Chordiya and Sabharwal have written a necessary text at a time of great need for those of us who care about good and just governance. Their book envisions the kind of change our students crave. The pages are brave, well-researched, and reasonable, and will infuse life into the most important debates facing public administration today.”
Nuri Heckler, co-Editor-in-Chief, Administrative Theory & Praxis
