Multicultural Organizational Development in Human Service Agencies: Who Leads and with What Results?

Background and Purpose: Implementing multicultural organizational development (MCOD), a complex type of organizational change, is a goal pursued by many human service agencies seeking to be more culturally responsive to their client/constituent base.  Research on organizational change has documented the essential role of leadership in framing and guiding transformation. As organizational leaders, human service managers typically are charged with facilitating change efforts including MCOD.  Recent studies suggest, however, that “low power actors” also motivate and pursue organizational change.  Low power actors are organizational members with relatively little formal authority but nonetheless have influence within the organization.  In human service organizations, low power actors can include line staff, volunteers, and client/constituent groups.  Given the high stakes that surround MCOD in human service organizations, it is important to understand who leads such efforts, why and with what results.

This study focuses on leadership of MCOD efforts in human service agencies, including who calls for and guides such initiatives, why they undertook these changes, and what was achieved.  Specifically, this research seeks to understand the different kinds of MCOD change trajectories given variations in leadership. 

Methods: Data are from 40 in-depth semi-structured interviews with human service staff members responsible for agency MCOD efforts (n=30) and consultants (n=10) who focus on MCOD in human service agencies.  Eight respondents known by the author were selected initially; they in turn recommended the rest of the interviewees.  The sample was 43% white, 60% female, and 33% low power actors.   The interview covered respondent’s position in the agency; agency focus; MCOD rationale, initiator, strategies and any changes in leadership; tasks and responsibilities in MCOD effort; change outcomes; challenges and obstacles; and recommendations for future change efforts.  All interviews were taped and transcribed.  Coding and analysis, done by the author and a graduate assistant, were guided by the constant comparative method.

Results: The resulting analytic themes that revealed factors effecting successful MCOD transformation were: staff training as primary (sole) strategy often resulted in failure; MCOD efforts needed to be embedded in a learning culture; holistic organization involvement was critical; and most telling, low-power actors proved to be positive change agents.  Based on these findings, a change typology was created: type of power actor by extent of change.    Specifically, the four types of change to emerge were: (1) reactive (high power actor by minimal change); (2) truncated (low power actor by minimal change); (3) facilitative (high power actor by comprehensive change) and (4) inclusive (low power actor by comprehensive change).

Conclusions and Implications:  In keeping with previous research on MCOD, this study underscores the importance of embedding efforts in the organization’s culture and of maximized organizational involvement.  This research makes additional contributions by highlighting the critical role of low power actors as change agents and offering a change typology based on type of leadership and extent of change.  This, in turn, suggests a more complex understanding of who leads organizational change efforts, as well as the differing MCOD trajectories in human service agencies.