Kochman and Mavrelis draw on over 20 years of experience as diversity trainers in the workplace to analyze the social and cultural tensions that arise between majority and minority groups in “corporate America,” with the goal of providing practical strategies for overcoming intergroup office conflict. As the title suggests, the authors take anthropological and sociolinguistic vantage points to bring to light the many ways in which group identity intersects with gender, race, and ethnicity to foster an “us vs. them” mentality within the workplace.
Meticulously researched and illustrated with real-world data from professional experience, Corporate Tribalism provides a fascinating window into the cultural practices and perceptions of the major stakeholders in the modern U.S. workforce. The authors do not want corporations to detribalize, forcing everyone into a single mold through an assimilationalist approach that erases or maginalizes differences, but instead to promote multicultural competencies and sensibilities. They offer useful insights on how to address cultural differences in such a way that the workplace can be an all-inclusive environment where everyone's contributions can be properly valued, and where various groups can communicate effectively without privileging one group over another.
The first part of the book has Corporate White Men (CWM) as its primary focus, while the second part is geared toward Corporate White Women (CWW). The archetypes provided enable the reader to understand how gender and race are pitted against one another to create groups that compete like tribes. The need to address white men and white women is paramount in the United States because they are the majority groups and they are most often oblivious of the privileges they have enjoyed. Before meaningful dialogue can begin to address the various tensions that impede various groups from working together harmoniously, it behooves those who are in the majority to learn to be sensitive to the views of their minority colleagues. By explaining and illustrating in considerable detail the roots and ramifications of many different cultural attitudes in the United States, Corporate Tribalism provides guidance for fashioning a multicultural work environment that incorporates and valorizes the outlooks and attitudes of minority groups.
Each of the two parts of the book could easily stand alone. Nevertheless, the two sections complement one another by providing cross-cultural and cross-gender insights that further enrich the dialogues necessary for a mulitcultural workplace. Corporate Tribalism is packed with practical advice and strategies, and Kochman and Mavrelis are sure to stimulate the kinds of dialogue that will promote sensitivity to the issues.
