A Deliberately Developmental Organization: A New Organizational Space for Inclusion

This chapter presents Robert Kegan’s theory and practice of Deliberately Developmental Organization (DDO) as an alternative organizational space for inclusion. A DDO intentionally cultivates an organizational culture and structure in which employees can form mutual and trustworthy relationships, and safely explore the unknown dimensions of themselves, others, their work, and the system that they are part of on an ongoing basis. Employees invite all of who they are—their deep thoughts, feelings, needs, and desires—as a subject for reflection and learning, which makes a DDO a space for whole-person inclusion (Yorks and Kasl in Adult Educ Q 52:176–192, 2002). Such a developmentally oriented, whole-person approach to inclusion, therefore, radically departs from a traditional, and yet still dominant, business case approach to inclusion that views diversity as a subject for management.