Katherine Penn Lampley, in fulfilling the requirements for Antioch University’s PhD Program in Leadership and Change, has written and published a dissertation titled, Experiencing Workplace Inclusion: Critical Incidents that Create a Sense of Inclusion for Professional Staff in Higher Education.
Professional staff make up the majority of employees at colleges and universities in the United States, but are rarely the focus of research in higher education. This exploratory study provides insight into the psychological experience of inclusion by examining the experiences and interactions that allow professional staff to develop a sense of belonging at work.
Using constructivist critical incident technique (CIT), Lampley conducted semi-structured interviews with 23 participants to uncover 78 inclusion incidents and the context surrounding those incidents at various levels within the organization. The findings reveal two pathways to inclusion for professional staff in higher education: the affirmation and impact pathways. An intersectional view of the results demonstrates that all participants, irrespective of social identity, experience inclusion in the workplace, expanding the perception of who benefits from inclusive environments. Analysis of the detailed descriptions of the outcomes of these incidents supports the expansion of the dominant conceptualization of workplace inclusion to include authenticity in addition to belongingness and uniqueness.
Read and download Lampley’s dissertation, Experiencing Workplace Inclusion: Critical Incidents that Create a Sense of Inclusion for Professional Staff in Higher Education, here.
