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How to Create a Culture of Dignity
(Excerpted and adapted from All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity by Robert W. Fuller, Berrett-Koehler: San Francisco, 2006.)
The Need for Collaboration
It’s impossible to know exactly what a particular dignitarian institution will look like in advance, because to qualify as dignitarian its design must take into account the views of those the institution will serve. In a dignitarian organization, everyone involved has a voice and everyone’s views have some political weight. The most important element in creating a dignitarian organization is to design a process that is collaborative and involves all stakeholders. (Leaders often design programs without involving the people they serve, and that’s one reason their ideas so often fall flat. Not only is such an approach ineffective, it is also rankist, because it assumes that the leaders necessarily know what would be best for an organization and the people it is meant to serve.)
Therefore, a template can only suggest an approach and basic framework for transforming an organization into a dignitarian one.
Suggested Components
As a basic model, a process used by many academic institutions in the 1960s to make institutions less sexist can serve as a template for making institutions of today less rankist.
1. Shared Governance: Using Special Committees and Open Hearings
During the 1960s, many academic institutions established special committees on the status of women. Typically, these committees were composed of women administrators, faculty, students, alumni, and staff, and also included a few men. They held open hearings on campus, during which anyone could call attention to policies or practices that were felt to demean women or put them at a disadvantage. The committees then compiled a list of specific instances of unfairness or abuse, along with potential remedies, and presented it to the administrator, group, or governing body with the power to redress the grievances at issue. Their final task was to persuade that official or body to adopt the recommended changes.
Similarly, as we build more dignitarian institutions, special committees to investigate the status of persons (specifically with regard to dignity) can be established. Open hearings can allow participants to point out ways in which members of various constituencies feel their dignity is not respected. A portion of the complaints may be contested, and some may eventually be judged to be unfounded. A number of the valid ones will be relatively easy to address. Other problems may take years or even decades to correct.
Key Elements of the Committee Approach
a. High-level Participation
The likelihood of success using committees and open hearings is greatly enhanced by the involvement of a figure of very high rank in the organization who makes it clear that it is safe for others to seriously challenge the status quo. It need not be the president, but, if not, it must be someone whom everyone knows speaks for the president.
b. Fixed Deadlines
Second, each committee must have a fixed deadline against which it works. As the postwar British Prime Minister Clement Atlee noted, “Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.”
c. Everyone Has a Voice
Dignitarian governance does not necessarily mean giving everyone a vote on every issue, but it does mean giving everyone a voice. To ensure those voices are heard usually requires having at least some voting representatives from each of the organization’s various constituencies serving at every level of its governance. This is sometimes referred to as multi-stakeholder or collaborative problem-solving.
For example, in an academic institution this means adding students and alumni to committees on student life, educational policy, and appointments and promotions; to the governing faculty body itself; and also to the board of trustees. Typically, such representatives hold 5-15 percent of the seats, but the percentage could go higher. The aim is to ensure that every group has an opportunity to make its interests known. This goal is given teeth by providing each group with enough votes to determine the outcome in situations when the group as a whole is closely divided. Vote ratios between various constituencies mirror their relative degree of responsibility for achieving each specific goal of the institution. Thus, students would have a decisive majority of votes on a student life committee; faculty a decisive majority on educational policy. And students, faculty, and administrators would all play minority roles in fiduciary decisions that traditionally are decided by the board of trustees.
Including voting representatives from all constituencies creates an environment in which the authorities do not merely deign to listen to those of lower rank. Rather, it behooves them to treat everyone with dignity because at the end of the day everyone will be exercising some degree of voting power over the outcome.
2. Shared Evaluation Process
In addition to shared governance, a dignitarian institution is likely to possess a number of other distinctive characteristics. For example, the evaluation process would be broadened so that people from constituencies other than the one for which the person is being evaluated would be involved in hiring decisions and reviews of job performance. In the corporate world, such evaluation models are referred to as “360-degree reviews.” All comments are provided as feedback to the employee.
3. Ombudsperson or Committee
Another useful practice is the appointment of an ombudsperson with broad responsibility for resolving disputes over the use and abuse of rank, or a committee with similar powers. Princeton University’s ombudsman in 2004, Camilo Azcarate, said that his job can largely be summed up as making the distinction between rank and rankism in a wide variety of circumstances. Whether an individual or a larger body, it is essential that organizations have a neutral party to whom individuals can go without fear of reprisal to help resolve issues of indignity.
4. Ongoing Institutional Reviews
Additionally, institution-wide constitutional reviews could be scheduled— every five or ten years—to update the system of governance in light of changing circumstances, to ensure that it remains dignitarian.
5. Truth and Reconciliation Process
Although often challenging to implement, a Truth and Reconciliation process similar to those used in Ireland and South Africa [see Chapter 10] can be carried out on a smaller scale within organizations, and may sometimes be necessary. A process by which individuals and groups who feel they have been treated in a rankist way can meet with those they feel have wronged them, for the purpose of mutual understanding and reconciliation, can heal past hurts and help prevent rankism in the future.
6. Open Discussion
Because rankism thrives in a climate of secrecy and silencing, implementing any or all of the above practices will naturally decrease the levels of rankism in an organization because the silence around rankism will have been broken. Once people are genuinely allowed to talk about it, rankism begins to lose its grip.