An Exercise for Expanding Privilege Awareness Among Management Students and Faculty

Abstract

The ability to notice and eliminate organizational inequities begins with privilege awareness: an understanding of how individuals and social groups experience exemption from discrimination as well as access to unearned advantages, such as disproportionate access to resources. Thus, privilege awareness is necessary for noticing, naming, and repairing inequities in our workgroups, organizations, and institutions. Engaging with privilege discourse in the classroom can be a monumental task for both management educators and learners without the requisite level of privilege awareness. We introduce an innovative exercise to develop and assess students’ understanding of privilege. The purpose of this exercise is to help learners identify and reflect on privilege in their personal and organizational lives, and build a shared vocabulary for doing so. Learners begin by mapping and reflecting on their various social identity group memberships, then answer a set of reflection questions. We provide an overview of this exercise including learning outcomes, general implementation guidelines, assessment criteria, and activity modifications. We also analyze the activity’s effectiveness based on responses from 83 students. We conclude with a discussion of how facilitators can respond to participant feedback as a resource for self-reflexivity and intersectional awareness.