Organizational Stress Testing as an Intentional Organizational and Managerial Strategy for Infusion of Culturally Responsive Leadership

• In Event: Possibilities for Leveraging Internal Resources to Shift Professional Practice: Increasing Organizational Capacity to Support Student Learning

Abstract

The following proposal examines a new theoretical process theorized as Organizational Stress Testing (OST). We regard OST as an intentional organizational and managerial strategy of culturally responsive leadership. The research explores OST in two parts; the first uses Mintzberg’s (1979) organizational model to explain how the districts of the study strategically moved their Office of Equity and Incision (OEI) personnel from Mintzberg’s support staff position to a middle-line positional role. This shift granted OEI staff organizational benefits that improved equity and cultural responsiveness. Secondly, through their newly gained authority, OEI staff began to embed tenets of cultural responsiveness throughout their districts’ many systems and practices that synergistically created pathways for conversations, education, and course correction about equity and inclusion.

Authors

• Victor Carter, University of Minnesota
  Presenting Author

• Bodunrin O Banwo, University of Massachusetts - Boston
  Presenting Author

• Eskender A. Yousuf, University of Minnesota
  Presenting Author

• Muhammad Khalifa, The Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Maurice Williams, University of Massachusetts - Boston
  Non-Presenting Author