What My Dissertation Taught Me About Organizational Belonging

Leadership Question

What if belonging is not something employees find—but something leaders intentionally design?

"Belonging is not created by proximity. It is created by organizational design."

— Dr. Dwan Anthony Jordon

Abstract

For decades, organizations have treated belonging primarily as an employee experience. Leaders invest in mentoring, onboarding, affinity groups, wellness initiatives, and culture-building with the expectation that stronger relationships will naturally produce stronger organizational commitment. My dissertation challenged that assumption.

Drawing upon a six-week Improvement Science intervention with Black male educators, this article argues that belonging is not principally an emotional state residing within employees but an organizational outcome produced through leadership, organizational design, and institutional stewardship. While participants experienced significantly stronger mentorship, identity affirmation, and interpersonal trust, many remained uncertain that the organization itself viewed them as future leaders. That distinction fundamentally reshaped my understanding of belonging.

Building upon these findings, this article introduces The Architecture of Belonging, a conceptual framework explaining how executive leadership, organizational systems, relational experiences, and future opportunity interact to produce enduring organizational commitment. Integrating Organizational Support Theory, Relational-Cultural Theory, Organizational Justice, Psychological Safety, Critical Race Theory, Sensemaking Theory, and Improvement Science, the framework positions belonging as a strategic organizational capability rather than a cultural aspiration.

The article concludes that organizations do not create belonging through isolated initiatives. They create belonging by intentionally designing environments where people are consistently recognized, trusted, developed, treated justly, and able to envision meaningful professional futures.

Keywords

Organizational Belonging; Educational Leadership; Improvement Science; Organizational Culture; Mentorship; Organizational Support; Psychological Safety; Organizational Justice; Critical Race Theory; Retention

Executive Summary

Few ideas have become more popular in organizational leadership than belonging.

School districts seek to build it. Universities measure it. Corporations invest heavily in employee belonging initiatives. Leaders routinely describe belonging as essential to organizational culture, employee engagement, and retention.

Yet despite this widespread attention, belonging remains one of the least understood concepts in organizational leadership.

Too often, organizations treat belonging as an individual emotion rather than an organizational responsibility. Leaders hope employees will feel connected after attending orientation, participating in mentoring programs, joining affinity groups, or spending sufficient time within the organization. When belonging fails to emerge, the assumption frequently becomes that employees simply have not integrated successfully into the organizational culture.

My dissertation challenged that assumption.

Through an Improvement Science intervention examining mentorship and belonging among Black male educators, I discovered that belonging does not emerge automatically from proximity, representation, or even supportive relationships. Rather, employees continually interpret organizational experiences to determine whether the institution genuinely values who they are today—and who they might become tomorrow. 

The study demonstrated that intentional mentorship strengthened confidence, identity affirmation, and peer relationships. Yet it also revealed an unexpected finding. Participants frequently experienced stronger connections with one another than confidence that the organization itself viewed them as future leaders. Mentorship increased interpersonal belonging more readily than organizational belonging. 

That finding fundamentally changed how I understand leadership.

Belonging is not something organizations hope employees discover.

Belonging is something organizations intentionally produce.

This article argues that belonging should be understood as a product of organizational design rather than organizational intention. Leadership creates belonging through the systems it builds, the opportunities it expands, the trust it extends, and the futures it makes possible. When viewed through this lens, belonging becomes not simply a cultural aspiration but one of the most important strategic responsibilities of executive leadership. Appendix - Click to view the full PDF