One major issue presented in the case is that of outright sabotage that Gov. Ronald Reagan implemented in his administration. The then-California governor organized a group of students to gang up against others. For example, he organized and paid Mexican students against Indian students (Valdata, 2006). Again, the other key problem was the fact that an intertribal college could not be located on an Indian reservation and successfully secure federal funding without having topnotch demographic standards.
Analysis of the identified issues
The idea of outright sabotage was meant to cause intentional damage to the American Indians who claim to the original inhabitants of the land of California. However, the mainstream society does not consider them the natives; hence, causing the damage to ensure that they remain minority groups who have limited educational opportunities. Sabotage implied that the Indians should have limited educational opportunities to attain acquire focused learning. However, the Indians saw to it that D-Q University is firmly rooted in their land as the indigenous inhabitants of California (Valdata, 2006). Therefore, there is turmoil on whether the California Indian Education should continue. Notably, an intertribal university could not thrive elsewhere outside the Indian reservation and if it did, it could not maintain the required demographic standards. Additionally, it could not receive adequate federal funding. According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, at least 51% of all students in tribal colleges must be from federally-recognized tribes. The provision presents enormous challenges that curtailed the efforts of many tribal students to join colleges and access quality higher education. The situation jeopardized the lives of students, mostly, from minority tribes. Although D-Q tried to accommodate students from many tribes, the school failed to consider the needs of students from the Indian tribe at the height of the intense renaissance of tribal identity. Many of California’s tribes were considered the smallest and poorest in the United States and most of them resided in small “rancherias” rather than in large reservations (Valdata, 2006). Regardless of the tribal issues that necessitated the implementation of outright sabotage by the state’s governor, California’s tribes took advantage of the situation and started to focus on progress to attain economic and social prosperity. The tribes realized that prosperity, as presented in this context, depends on building and reinforcing positive relationships with non-Indian communities to ensure that their gaming businesses gained competitive advantages. Also, prosperity depends on devising policies that favor progress even among the minority tribes in the United States, for example, the administrators of higher education institutions must enter agreements with both state and federal agreements to ensure that the interests of the less fortunate are put into consideration. By so doing, the Indian tribe ensured that they became business savvy and leveraged sophisticated opportunities to overcome political influence that previously thwarted their efforts to attain quality education.
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Additionally, an organization with people from multiracial and diverse ethnic backgrounds requires effective management to ensure that it accommodates the needs of the people from all tribes. The federal government should play a central role in providing adequate funding to deal with possible mismanagement and possible resignations among the top management executives. From the conflicting ideological forces, the teams decided to have a shared vision to help them attain a common objective. For example, resorting to a shared vision motivated the team members to secure $1 billion to support D-Q’s university development programs and help the organization to solve the problems affecting the local Indian community (Valdata, 2006). Proper financial arrangements and political agreements are the key drivers to ensuring that a given group benefits from an organization and its activities, especially if it is an institution located in a demographic region with a diverse cultural background.
Approach to leadership utilizing ideas presented in the course to solve the issues identified
From the foregoing, there is a better approach to leadership at D-Q University to solve the tribal and financial challenges that curtail the progress and success of the institution. For example, the disciplines of a learning organization are applicable in ensuring effective leadership to ensure that public institutions properly serve the public. In real life, leaders should be innovative when it comes to transforming an organization to ensure that it serves the entire public rather than basing policy-making on tribal lines. Transforming a tribal organization requires the invention and innovation of learning to provide “component technologies”, which in this case, are ideas that support unity and teamwork. Notably, the “component technologies presented in this context are the recipes for the “ensemble of technologies that are critical for each other’s success” (Senge, n.d). Ideally, organizations operating in multicultural environments must embrace unity and a shared vision if they are to prosper economically as regards cost-effectiveness and the appropriateness of purpose. Institutions of higher learning must adopt the “component technologies” if they are to prosper and to prove successful in an environment facing tribal challenges. Therefore, attaining the capacity and top aspirations of an organization depends on systems thinking to help the policymakers have a clear view of better tomorrow for both the current and future generations. Although people may have diverse perspectives that vary in time and space, the long-term vision of an organization should remain the same. Achieving the organization’s objectives largely depends on the invisible fabrics of interrelated actions that can solve the deepest problems of the learners. Therefore, “systems thinking” is a crucial tool for eliminating the possible barriers to effective decision-making and ensuring organizational change.
Other than systems thinking, an organization that intends to serve people from diverse tribal, ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds must embrace personal mastery as a way to deepen the personal visions of the stakeholders. For instance, focusing all the synergies of the stakeholders to develop SMART objectives that are attainable in real-time can be the cornerstone for the success of a learning organization. However, decision-makers should be committed to ensuring that the organization has the capacity to implement the ideas of its members without compromising the spiritual and secular traditions of a particular community in which the institution is located (Senge, n.d). To put matters into perspective, if D-Q University can encourage the growth of the Indian tribe in this manner, it can tap vast resources. Personal mastery helps people in an organization to have a sense of commitment and obliged to achieve the mission of the organization.
Most importantly, building a shared vision is crucial in an organization. An organization that is experiencing the problem of tribal issues should develop shared leadership to equip it with the capacity to help it sustain a considerable degree of greatness. A shared vision helps leaders to set common goals, hold similar values and strive towards fulfilling similar missions that are deeply shared in the organization. Regardless of the ethnic backgrounds, shared vision ensures that an organization’s leaders have a common identity and a sense of destiny for their long-term success (Senge, n.d). Rather than having personal visions, leaders should ensure that they develop shared visions for galvanizing organizations operating in multicultural settings. For instance, shared vision ensures that there is a genuine commitment and enrollment instead of complying with the tribal laws that increase the severity of poor relationships among community members.
Above all, working in a multicultural background requires organizational leaders to focus on teamwork that is based on the discipline of team learning. Notably, the team learning discipline encourages dialogue rather than perpetuating tribal clashes that curtail the success of an organization. Dialogue ensures that the assumptions and beliefs of a particular group are not suspended and that all the employees and all relevant stakeholders can think together. The idea of dialogue in an organization promotes a culture of recognizing the different patterns of interaction to ensure that teams have a mutual understanding.
Putting ideas discussed above into practice can ensure that an organization is able to effectively manage the complex systems in the contemporary world. Other than tribal issues experienced at D-Q University, other problems also exist in the current management systems. For example, the United States is battling with today’s arms race, environmental problems, the war on drugs, and budget and trade deficits that require collaboration and teamwork to ensure the success of its key institutions. System dynamics presents enormous problems, which are increasingly complex and interconnected (Senge, n.d). Therefore, managers should prioritize the concept of adaptive organizational learning to ensure that they build new types of organizations that are decentralized, nonhierarchical, and puts the interests of diverse groups into perspective. Collective decision-making in any organization ensures the growth of employees for long-term success. Organizations should adopt radical corporate philosophies that can help them attain their long-term objectives. However, such philosophies must be based on the core values of both freedom and responsibility (Senge, n.d). Innovative organization designs can also help organizations to avoid possible administrative bottlenecks linked to tribal, racial, or even cultural issues. Indeed, team building and the capacity to innovate provide a serene environment for building learning institutions so that members of society and people from different communities can become more adept learners.
References
Senge, M. P. (n.d). The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s6v7TEJN7yv6PMbm_xatJdlw9nYRFACM/view
Valdata, P. (April 20, 2006). The Rebirth of D-Q University. Cox, Matthews, and Associates, Inc. https://diverseeducation.com/article/5766/
