The sociopolitical landscape around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practice has shifted momentously in the past few years. Backlash threatens to fully upend efforts to address systemic inequities in our nation’s two largest social institutions—work and school. After recent executive orders and federal actions, leaders across industries and sectors are asking how to continue DEI work, or if it’s even possible.

In this moment of uncertainty, leaders have a chance to move DEI work forward by refocusing on organizational justice. First developed in the late 1980s and 1990s and later shaped with an eye toward application, organizational justice is a framework that focuses on fair treatment through equitable structures, policies, and processes. In the context of DEI, this approach recognizes that while organizational justice and social justice share core values, they differ in both scope and strategy. Efforts grounded in organizational justice can and usually should account for broader societal inequities, but their main goal is to ensure fairness within the organization itself. Because of that, tactics that drive social change in public or activist spaces don’t always work the same way inside institutions, and in some cases, they may even backfire.

Leaders and practitioners who understand the relationship between these two approaches and who address organizational injustice in ways that are context-specific, process-driven, and institutionally legitimate will be more successful and have stronger and more lasting impacts. They will also find it easier to navigate rising challenges to DEI work.

What Organizational Justice Demands

Different people in organizations will always get different things for various reasons, but the people in an organization must trust that the processes allocating opportunities and benefits are fundamentally fair and legitimate. An organizational justice approach therefore focuses on the fair and just treatment of all employees, emphasizing structures, policies, and processes over individual interventions. It also acknowledges that the formal and informal rules governing the allocation of resources will vary significantly between an investment bank, a municipality, and a local nonprofit.

Read the full article about organizational justice by Ahmmad Brown and Pamela Coukos at Stanford Social Innovation Review.