‘We’re supposed to be at the forefront’: a multiple case study exploring how institutional context shapes engineering diversity and inclusion initiatives

Abstract

Research suggests the normative culture of engineering perpetuates the marginalization of individuals with excluded identities, contributing to a lack of diversity in academia and the workforce. As evidenced by recent funding opportunities, stakeholders view diversity and inclusion (D&I) as critical to broadening participation, and many engineering units have espoused their commitment to D&I efforts. However, additional research is needed to better understand how institutional contexts shape D&I efforts occurring in academic engineering units. This multiple case study examined engineering units at three U.S. universities that received the same National Science Foundation grant to cultivate an inclusive engineering culture. Drawing from the field of organizational theory, I analyzed data from 11 interviews and 209 pages of documents to understand how university context shaped engineering D&I efforts. The theory of neoinstitutionalism was used as a lens to understand similarities and differences among the cases. Findings suggest D&I efforts were heavily shaped by institutional contexts including the desire for prestige, availability of resources, and pressure from internal and external stakeholders. Implications for policymakers, funding agencies, and engineering leaders point to the need to re-imagine markers of engineering education legitimacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Diversity and inclusion
• Engineering education reform
• Neoinstitutionalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 ‘National Science Foundation’.

2 Leydens and Lucena, Engineering Justice.

3 Lezotte, “Making Sense of Diversity and Inclusion in Engineering.”

4 Ibid.

5 DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited.”

6 Ibid. and March, “Footnotes to Organizational Change.” Also see Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations.”

7 Suchman, “Managing Legitimacy,” 574.

8 Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations”; Meyer and Scott, “Centralization and the Legitimacy Problems of Local Governments.”

9 Meyer, Scott, and Deal, “Institutional and Technical Sources of Organizational Structure.”

10 Deephouse et al., “Organizational Legitimacy.”

11 Mintzberg, “Structure in 5’s.”

12 Etzioni, “Authority Structure and Organizational Effectiveness.”

13 Cohen and March, “Leadership in an Organized Anarchy.”

14 Scott, Organizations.

15 Keup et al., “Organizational Culture and Institutional Transformation.”

16 Shadle, Marker, and Earl, “Faculty Drivers and Barriers.”

17 Argyris, “Initiating Change that Perseveres.”

18 Tierney, “Organizational Culture in Higher Education.”

19 Kotter, “Leading Change.”

20 Clark, “The Contradictions of Change in Academic Systems,” 101

21 DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited.”

22 Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations,” 341.

23 Daft and Weick, “Toward a Model of Organizations as Interpretation Systems”; Pfeffer and Salancik, The External Control of Organizations.

24 DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited”; Suchman, “Managing Legitimacy.”

25 DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited.”

26 Hawley, “Human Ecology,” 334.

27 DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited.”

28 Ibid.

29 Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations.”

30 Finnegan and Gamson, “Disciplinary Adaptations to Research Culture in Comprehensive Institutions,” 144.

31 Stake, The Art of Case Study Research.

32 Hansmann, “Why Do Universities Have Endowments?”

33 Stake, The Art of Case Study Research.

34 Patton, Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods.

35 Ibid.

36 Saldaña, The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers.

37 Ibid.

38 Erlingsson and Brysiewicz, “A Hands-on Guide to Doing Content Analysis”; Hsieh and Shannon, “Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis.”

39 Altheide et al., “Emergent Qualitative Document Analysis,” 130.

40 Saldaña, The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers.

41 Guba and Lincoln, “Judging the Quality of Fourth Generation Evaluation.”

42 Guba and Lincoln, Effective Evaluation, 377.

43 Stake, Multiple Case Study Analysis; Miles and Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis, 173.

44 Beckert, “Institutional Isomorphism Revisited,” 156.

45 DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited.”

46 Ashworth, Boyne, and Delbridge, “Escape from the Iron Cage?”

47 Meyer and Rowan, “Institutional Analysis and the Study of Education.”

48 Meyer and Rowan, “Institutionalized Organizations.”

49 DiMaggio and Powell, “The Iron Cage Revisited,” 75.