Introduction and Overview
Rational & overview for the event
UK higher education is operating in a period of significant change and uncertainty. Business Schools are navigating organisational restructuring, financial pressures, changing expectations around equity, diversity and inclusion, workforce insecurity and concerns about staff wellbeing and trust. In this environment, belonging cannot be treated simply as whether staff feel welcomed. It is shaped by culture, leadership, opportunity, voice, recognition, safety and confidence that institutional systems will operate fairly when circumstances become difficult.
Business School leaders have a critical role in moving beyond symbolic commitments towards cultures in which staff can thrive. This requires attention not only to individual experience, but also to the structures, practices and power relations that can produce exclusion, conditional belonging and unequal experiences across staff groups.
This interactive half-day workshop for the Chartered ABS/CMBE community provides an open and respectful space for leaders to examine what belonging means in the current HE climate, who is more or less likely to experience it, and what happens when belonging is tested by organisational change, conflict, discrimination, controversy or reputational pressure. Rather than assuming consensus, the session invites participants to engage with differing perspectives associated with fostering cultures in which colleagues can flourish. It moves from context and differential belonging to institutional courage, leadership responsibility, measurement and practical action.
Core framing question (s)
When belonging comes under pressure, what do our institutions reveal about who is valued, protected, heard and able to thrive?
When belonging comes under pressure, do institutional systems, leadership behaviours and cultures actively produce belonging or exclusion?
Event details
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