Some of these will be about how work gets done and how people relate to each other. Other commonalities will be shared interests and identities. The data from the Theater Department finds that the same factors which make for a tight-knit and effective office necessarily produce tensions as well, since no person will ever be a perfect fit. Despite goodwill efforts, the core group failed to build friendly work relationships with the staff members who had less in common with them. Ultimately, the two women resigned, as did the new mother who succeeded the accountant.
Diversity brings changes in work roles.
In successful offices, the job is molded to the employee's sense of self, especially with something so deeply embedded as gender identity. Rather, their jobs acquired a professional patina, a greater set of responsibilities and autonomy, as befits U.S. society's image of appropriate work for a professional white male. Or they may get a welcome opportunity to remake the job in their own style. Staff sustained this pocket of difference within the university with the support of the like-minded Theater Department. They were an anomaly but they were not acting in isolation.