Towards Inclusion: Systemic Change Through Organizational Education

This article discusses inclusion in social work from an organizational perspective and suggests that organizational education (a new discipline and profession focusing on learning organizations) opens up new perspectives for organizing inclusion. In making this argument, the authors start with a notion of social inclusion that is connected to theories of social jus‐ tice, social exclusion


Introduction
Social professions such as social work, social pedagogy, community organizing, and more have been established and developed with the aim of furthering social justice in divided capitalist societies and enabling social inclusion (Leiby, 1978;Schreiner & Köngeter, 2020). Even before the invention of these new professions at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, social services were delivered by organizations (such as charity organizations or almshouses). As shown by Andrew Abbott in his historical analysis of social work's development, these organizations are often older than the profession itself (Abbott, 1995). Social work and other social professions began to connect these organizations and interpreted them as an interconnected field of action that followed the ethics, theories, and practices of a profession they called social work (Abbott, 1995, p. 557). However, organizations continue to be social entities with their own aims, structures, ethical considerations, etc., that may conflict with professional considerations (Lipsky, 2010).
For a long time, the importance of organizations and the process of organizing social services were neglected in social work research. An organizational perspective on social work, however, is pivotal to revealing the structures and dynamics on the meso-level leading to social exclusion and inclusion. Social service organizations are not only influenced by processes in society but are themselves major actors translating decisions on the macro-level into action on the meso-level and finally on the micro-level. Social organizations have a duty to interpret and apply legislation and are therefore actively involved in producing a just or unjust society. Some theorists in social work even argue that social work is a profession of justice (Schrödter, 2007;Ziegler et al., 2010). We will argue here that social work organizations are major actors in their own right in achieving or impeding social justice and that their function hinges on the question of how social work clients are included in the organization of social work.
Our theoretical approach to inclusion is informed by the theory of social justice proposed by Young (1990Young ( , 2000 and by the theory of social exclusion developed by Good Gingrich (2003,2016). Young relates inclusion to democratic decision-making processes: "Strong and normatively legitimate democracy…includes all equally in the process that leads to decisions [by] all those who will be affected by them (Young, 2000, p. 11). Young's approach towards inclusion differs from inclusion theories found in education or in the diversity and inclusion debate in organizational theories. It is not related to criteria such as having access to regular institutions, being part of a social group, being valued, getting support, meeting needs, respecting differences, and recognizing diversity (e.g., Qvortrup & Qvortrup, 2018). Instead, it says that the degree of inclusion people gain is determined by their chance to make decisions that affect their own life. This move shifts the focus to decisions that are made within organizations. From this perspective, inclusion in organizations requires creating structures and cultures that enable everyone involved in service delivery, including staff and clients, to have a say in the decision-making that affects their lives. This emphasis on the importance of position and decision-making aligns with theoretical deliberations in the discourse on social exclusion: "We define social exclusion as the official procedures and everyday practices that function to draw individuals and groups inside to devalued and dispossessed places, and thus (re)produce, reinforce, and justify economic, spatial, sociopolitical, and subjective divides" (Good Gingrich & Köngeter, 2017, p. 326).
Against the background of historical and recent developments in child and youth service organizations, we will discuss the importance of an organizational perspective on inclusion. In the next chapter, we will highlight the paradox situation of social service organizations, caught between exclusion and inclusion. From there we will turn to organizational education and the opportunity it presents in enabling organizations to become inclusive. As the focus of organizational pedagogy is on learning and culture, we will examine both topics and discuss what role they play in organizations that are, or are becoming, inclusive. To do so, we will examine findings of a case study that explores different interpretations of diversity within a youth welfare office. Finally, we will draw a conclusion and describe how the outlook of organizational pedagogy can contribute to further discussions.

Social Work Organizations and Their Ambivalence Towards Inclusion
Social work is a profession that aims to further social change and is based-among other principles-on the principle of social justice: "Social justice is a core value of social work and has remained a central focus of social work's mission and purpose since its establishment" (Watts & Hodgson, 2019, p. 23). First, theories of social justice have the function to provide social work with ethical considerations justifying and navigating social practices in social work. The "social question" of the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century raised the issue of the deep social divide between rich and poor and how to overcome the ongoing social exclusion of parts of the population from the economy, education, politics, etc. Welfare institutions and social professions were established to further the social inclusion of these groups. However, politics of social inclusion often had, and still have, an adverse effect on these groups; their inclusion or the specific form of their inclusion is unfavourable to them (Good Gingrich, 2003;Sen, 2000), e.g., when people are included in the labour market in jobs that threaten their self-development or self-determination, or as demonstrated by the history of Indigenous peoples' inclusion in Western settler societies (Libesman, 2014). Social professions are assigned to organize the facilitation and enforcement of inclusion into different systems of society, sometimes against the will of the people affected by inclusion policies. However, this form of inclusion often contradicts the democratic understanding of inclusion described above. We argue that an understanding of how social work is organized is key to explaining this contradiction and to finding alternative ways of dealing with the task of inclusion.

Welfare Organizations and Decision-Making
Welfare institutions such as social security services or child protection services are designed to overcome or at least to change the dynamics of social exclusion in a capitalist society. Its organizations are the backbone of these institutions. Ideas and notions of social justice are therefore part of the DNA both of welfare institutions and organizations of social work and other professions. The way welfare is organized, however, not only produces social justice but can also lead to the continuation or even the worsening of social injustice. This can be seen as a fundamental structural dilemma when organizing social professions. To present this argument, we pick up on the theory of social justice that Young (1990)

described in her book
Social Justice and the Politics of Difference. She starts by describing the experiences of injustice articulated in the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, e.g., the civil rights movement, the second-wave feminism movement, the LGBTIQ* movement, and many more. Her critical approach to social justice does not search for universal, abstract rules to determine what is just, but starts with concrete experiences of injustice in certain social contexts. She argues that discussions of social justice should be focused less on formal deliberations on universal rules to decide about what is just and more on listening: "Normative reflection arises from hearing a cry of suffering or distress, or feeling distress oneself" (Young, 1990, p. 5). Starting out from this insight, she identifies two types of social injustice: oppression and dominance: The values comprised in the good life can be reduced to two very general ones: (1) developing and exercising one's capacities and expressing one's experience, and (2) participating in determining one's action and the conditions of one's action….To these two general values correspond two social conditions that define injustice: oppression, the institutional constraint on self-development, and domination, the institutional constraint on self-determination. (Young, 1990, p. 37) The two experiences of social injustice, oppression, and dominance, are embedded in social contexts that cannot be denied when we talk about experiences of social justice or injustice. Young's differentiation between five forms of oppression occurring in different social and cultural settings-exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence-are often referred to in the discipline and profession of social work. In the following, however, we will focus on social injustices relating to dominance, to be differentiated from oppression. Although all people who are oppressed are dominated, not all people who are dominated also experience some form of oppression. Young defines domination as "the structural or systemic phenomena which exclude people from participating in determining their actions or the conditions of their actions" (Young, 1990, p. 31) and, as shown above, social inclusion in turn requires the chance to participate in making decisions that can determine actions and the conditions behind those actions. Dominance is therefore the result of politics and decision-making within politics, with "politics" defined as "all aspects of institutional organization, public action, social practices and habits, and cultural meanings insofar as they are potentially subject to collective evaluation and decisionmaking" (Young, 1990, p. 35).
The national welfare state, which tames capitalist society in various ways, is the socio-historical context in which these questions of social justice are discussed and translated into practice. The establishment of welfare state institutions and organizations is therefore equiprimordial with political struggles and society's moral reflections about social justice and injustice. The social professions can be seen as a social arena where these political struggles and moral reflections take place vicariously. They develop their codes of ethics, but with reference to the welfare state and its legal regulations, bureaucratic administrations, fiscal restrictions, and much more. Unlike other professions that are considered to be long-established (such as law, medicine, etc.), the new social professions have not developed a form of autonomy comparable with medicine, science, law, etc. Furthermore, social services are delivered predominantly within and by organizations. The concrete social embeddedness of social professions leads social professions and particularly social work to have an ambivalent structure.
Young argues with reference to Offe (1984) that these welfare state organizations are largely de-politicized spheres where rules are established and decisions made without any relation to public discussions; that politics and state institutions are becoming increasingly uncoupled from one another: Most public policy decisionmaking takes place as part of the day-to-day operations of these government agencies, which receive with their legislative or executive creation wide powers to formulate and enforce regulations. Most of these policies are hammered out in complex and informal negotiating processes within the agencies and between these agencies. (Young, 1990, p. 73) This de-politicization of decisions creates a fertile ground for dominance structures to be reproduced in our societies with no opportunity for reflection on the social injustices taking place. This is the reason why so many forms of dominance are not detected or revealed in public: Welfare organizations and institutions are designed to reduce public discourse on the myriad of decisions that must be made. But at the same time, they withdraw these decisions from public discourse.
Dominance structures established by bureaucratic welfare organizations can go hand in hand with cultural imperialism and the neglect of self-determination. Many Indigenous communities have experienced adverse inclusion in the welfare state and its bureaucratic organizations, with devastating effects on their community. Although organizations are one of the major vehicles for pushing through cultural dominance, the basis for this form of oppression lies in Western nation-states denying Indigenous peoples the chance for self-determination (Young, 2000). The Western notion of the nation-state, uniting territory, authority, and right (Sassen, 2008), fails to recognize the diversity and multiplicity of sovereignties within a nation-state (Decat, 2012). Indigenous communities' claim to self-determination challenges the iron cage of the Western welfare systems and their organizations. At the same time, this claim criticizes the politics of inclusion that have led to experiences of dominance and oppression.

Child Welfare Organizations and Their History of Social Exclusion
The standard account of the establishment and professional history of social work often emphasizes the relationship between social work and social justice. However, the observable practice of social work and the experiences of those who are meant to deliver social services or benefit from them-the service users-paint a different picture. Social work as a profession has excluded both clients and social workers by drawing boundaries and claiming authority over organizations and fields of action in social work. Critical accounts on the historiography of social exclusion by social work and its organizations show that social work continues to tell a story of progress, despite the fact that we continue to identify exclusive practices in social work up to the present time (Chapman & Withers, 2019). Examples of these practices include settler colonialism and imperialism affecting early social reformers (Johnstone, 2016), racial discrimination in the settlement house movement (Lasch-Quinn, 1993), the incarceration of Japanese Americans in the US during World War II (Park, 2019), and the coerced placement of children from vagrant people in Switzerland (Mottier, 2012), among others. Also, the history of child welfare organizations is a history of scandals. For more than 20 years now, the abuse of children placed in childcare organizations in almost all Western countries has been investigated by researchers, journalists, residents, and professionals. The Ryan Report in Ireland was one of the first encompassing studies on the history of childcare services (Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, 2009). In the years that followed it, the oppression taking place in these organizations was also investigated in Germany and Switzerland.
Most research has been conducted on the childcare organizations where this kind of abuse took place and less on the organizations that referred children to those places. From an organizational point of view, this differentiation is crucial. As defined by Hasenfeld (1972), the former organizations are people-changing organizations. These organizations are designed to include clients for a longer time to supposedly help them in various ways. As Goffman (1961) showed in his groundbreaking research on total institutions, the structure of these organizations produces the oppression that clients experience there. People-processing organizations, on the other hand, are tasked with classifying clients, making decisions about the subsequent process of supporting clients, and referring them to other organizations which are then supposed to help clients cope with their lives. These organizations' central task is decision-making: deciding about classifications, the types of services used, the organizations delivering the services, etc. The organizations' decision-making is carried out by professionals who make use of their discretionary power (Lipsky, 2010), but who are also tied to decisions contained in the organizations' policies, regulations, legal obligations, etc.
Historical research on the decision-making carried out by people-processing childcare service organizations shows that clients are classified not only by professional categories but also by theories about what is thought to be normal or deviant. Normalization strategies aim to make clients fit society's requirements, which are considered a prerequisite for a worthy life. What is considered to be normal, however, is often rooted in stereotypes about marginalized groups in society and leads to disruptive and harmful decisions. One example is the history of girls in childcare. Categorization as a deviant or neglected girl is related to traditional, bourgeois notions of femininity (Gehltomholt & Hering, 2006). Being placed in care fuelled these girls' stigmatization and had devastating consequences for many of them (Schmidt, 2002).
Another example from Switzerland is the systematic, extensive placement in care of children of the Jenische, a vagrant people living in Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland. In 1926, the still-existing youth agency Pro Juventute established a foundation for the "children of the country road" (Kinder der Landstrasse). In the period leading up to 1972, over 600 children were placed in care, often against the will of their parents, as the life of travellers was thought to endanger these children.
These two examples of historical research on young people and their families being dominated by childcare organizations reveal the pivotal importance of the classification processes used by people-processing organizations. As Adrienne Chambon noted in a review of historical accounts: At this point, we can say that two strands of social work were tightly woven into the texture of the profession. On the one hand, striving towards greater collectivity, integration, we-ness, with social work intervention as a facilitator or mediator…and on the other, a distance between the knower and the known, the professional (Self) and the client (Other), on the basis of professional and academic knowledge. (Chambon, 2013, p. 122) Both strands can be identified in the points made above. A lack of recognition of diversity in society and the idea of bringing together social groups in the name of social justice go hand in hand. It is the lack of participation in decision-making found in people-processing organizations that forms the basis for practices of social injustice despite the intention of furthering social justice. Developments in social professions, their advanced discourse on social justice, and their theories and models for processing clients are often not placed in the context of and related to modern welfare administration, institutions, and organizations, which all still act as an iron cage. The question we would like to raise here is how social professions can be enabled to reflect, reveal, and reform their organizational practices that so profoundly shape professional decision-making. From our point of view, organizational education is an important entry point to this discussion. It asks whether and how clients, client groups, and the public can be included in the administration of the welfare state and related organizations involved in social welfare and social work.

Organizational Education as a Way of Organizing Inclusion
Organizational education is a subdiscipline within educational science and an emerging profession that furthers learning within and between organizations, and the education of organizations. Organizational education puts organizations at the centre of social and educational professions and does not just discuss organization as one of many contextual factors influencing the delivery of social or educational services (Engel & Göhlich, 2022, p. 12). Instead, it argues that organizing and delivering social services coincide, and organizations are therefore part and parcel of social and educational services.
The nature of social services affects the way they are organized. Social services can only be delivered in cooperation with their clients. Whether people are processed and changed depends on the clients who coproduce the service-or the service delivery fails. Therefore, the process of service delivery and whether clients have a say in organizing social services are of great interest to organizational education: "In accordance with the epistemological approach to education, organizational education looks not only at the structural constitution of organizations, but also at their processual and cultural aspects" (Göhlich et al., 2018, p. 208).
Organizational education specifically deals with questions about organizational learning. We can differentiate between learning in organizations, by organizations, and between organizations. Learning in organizations focuses on learning by individual or collective actors that are members of organizations, or other related actors. This is related to learning by organizations (Göhlich et al., 2018, p. 207); these two fields can only be differentiated analytically. Organizations in the field of social services are particularly highly interconnected, as described in the section on people-processing and people-changing organizations. Therefore, learning by organizations is often related to learning between organizations. From this educational perspective, organizations are not only actors in learning processes but also outcomes of such processes.
Learning is the central process that leads to the establishment of organizational identity and culture. Theories of organizational culture (Schein, 1990) are often used to research and explain differences in the way social service organizations perceive their social environment, organize their professional work, collaborate with their clients, etc. (Cloos, 2007;Klatetzki, 1993). Organizational culture can be defined as those parts of an organization that are not decided upon, but shape its members' expectations about how to act. It can be seen as a fertile source of ideas within organizations, not determining what is done in those organizations, and how, but exerting an influence thereon (Kühl, 2018).
Learning and culture are interrelated, as Fahrenwald (2011) pointed out in her study on narrating as a central practice of learning. Stories are a crucial medium of learning in organizations. They are a traditional and still often-used way of ensuring that members of organizations know how the world should be perceived, understand the nature of things, and realise how things should be done. Stories are also a means of remembering what is important. They are an integral part of the memory of organizations. But not all stories are considered to be an integral part of an organization's identity. Pro Juventute, for example, is responsible for breaking up families among vagrant people in Switzerland, yet emphasizes its long-standing commitment to supporting children, young people, and their families on its website. Although there has been some form of reappraisal of this dark episode in their history, there is little sign of their examining their past in their public appearance.
As described above, social work and its organizations are arenas of social contestation and debate. Against this background, it is important to organize memory work. Social service organizations are archives of these conflicts, and learning what to do and how to do it in social work is as important as learning what not to do and how not to do it. Initiating a learning culture is therefore important for the development of responsible and accountable social service organizations. This is even more true when organizations have oppressed and dominated minority groups in the name of Western welfare states, such as the cultural genocide of vagrant people in Switzerland or settler colonial states and their Indigenous communities. A learning culture needs to be implemented both in the organizations that were involved in this wrongdoing and in civil societies.
Its focus on learning is not the only way in which organizational education differs from other academic disciplines dealing with organizations, such as organizational psychology or organizational sociology. Educational science always involves normative reflection on learning and discusses ethics within education. This is also true of organizational education. Engel and Göhlich (2022) argue that ethical considerations are especially vital in organizational education, given the significant power held by organizations and the potential for their actions to cause harm to the individuals they serve. "They produce structures, discourses and practices that discriminate against people, make people's working and learning environments neoliberal in terms of the use of human resources, and create unequal conditions for potential access to education, learning and knowledge production" (Engel & Göhlich, 2022, p. 13, translated by the authors). As shown in historical research on organizations in modern society, bureaucratic organizations, in particular, tend to suppress moral deliberation and remove their members' personal responsibility (Ortmann, 2020).
It is therefore important to understand processes of organizing social services as a means not only of managing such services efficiently but also of developing an "educational way of organizing." The educational approach searches for a new way of creating organizations that "becomes a heterotopia; a counter-site on which to pin hopes of a different practice of organization and the social sphere" (Weber, 2020, p. 358, translated by the authors). This search seems to be necessary for organizations to find ways of becoming inclusive. The trivial assertion that organizations can be inclusive or exclusive is especially important for social service organizations since these organizations often claim in public to generate inclusion whereas they produce exclusion. It leads to the question of how the people that are affected by organizations and their decisions can participate in decision-making. Or, to put it in the words of Iris Marion Young, the question of how to democratize social service organizations. This process of democratization needs to take into account people's right to selfdetermination, a fact that could ultimately lead to the pluralisation of welfare systems within a diverse national welfare state (Libesman, 2014).
The approach of organizational education takes a critical stance towards this long-standing tradition in social professions that focuses on the further development of professional practices and argues that systemic change can only occur if social service organizations and their organizational culture change. Inclusion, therefore, becomes an integral part of all aspects of organizing social services, with a specific focus on the cultural dimension of organizations. This approach means re-imagining the way clients are perceived and re-positioning clients in the decision-making processes used by social service organizations.

Critical Management of Diversity and Inclusion: A Case Example
Organizations classify people by social categories such as class, race, gender, sexual orientation and identity, age, lifestyle, etc., as shown above in the description of historical research on child and youth care services. From an anti-essentialist viewpoint, these categorization processes are rooted not only in professional traditions but also in organizational culture and its societal environment. Since categorizing is constitutive to all social professions, the aim cannot be to avoid categorizing, but to organize reflection on how categorizing takes place and to organize clients' opportunities to participate in categorization processes that affect them. We will sketch out an example from a recent study to show exactly how we address reflection on culture and structure in the context of learning.
In an organizational case study on diversity within a youth welfare service (Jugendamt, a typical peopleprocessing organization within the child and youth welfare system), Schreiner (2021) analysed what diversity meant for the delivery of services. Using grounded theory methodology (Corbin & Strauss, 2008), the study focused on the organizational culture and the professionals' interpretations of diversity. The staff were considered experts on their organization and its cultural practices, with explicit knowledge about policies and practices within the organization. Parts of the interview guide focused on this explicit knowledge as suggested in the methodology of expert interviews (Gläser & Laudel, 2010). These parts were complemented by narrative prompts as in problem-centred interviews (Witzel, 2000) to also gather implicit knowledge of the organizational culture. Altogether, fourteen interviews were conducted from different departments and hierarchy levels, which led to a saturation of the different interpretations of diversity in this organization. Schreiner (2021) finds that in this organization, diversity is interpreted differently depending on the group the interviewees are talking about: staff or clients. For example, clients having a "migration background" (Migrationshintergrund, a term for all clients who migrated or whose parents migrated to Germany) is described as a challenge for their organization. Among other things, they argue that clients lack cultural knowledge and have lower language skills (Schreiner, 2021, pp. 128-130). When it comes to staff's "migration background," however, this category is related to specific competencies, special cultural knowledge, and language skills (Schreiner, 2021, pp. 132-133). This ambivalent interpretation of diversity within this social service organization is pervasive: On the one hand, diversity is used to construct a social problem among clients; on the other hand, it is seen as a resource for the organization as it promises to solve the problem that clients create.
There are multiple reasons to examine organizational structure, contexts, and culture as factors affecting their learned behaviours. In the youth welfare office studied here, as in other social service organizations, social services are provided based on a legally accepted social diagnosis or recognized social problem. Otherwise, social services cannot be granted to a client or group of clients (Schreiner, 2021, p. 128). The problematization of clients is therefore necessary for the funding of social service organizations. They learn to focus on social problems to sustain existing social services and to create new services for (potential) clients. However, within the staff, diversity is seen in exactly the opposite light: the same categories are primarily seen as a resource (Schreiner, 2021, pp. 146-148). This is not only due to solidarity among colleagues: diversity is seen as a feature that helps to fulfil the organizational purpose (Schreiner, 2021, p. 147). The category "migration background" has a double purpose. It creates the need to treat this population differently, and to do so there is a need for staff that fit the social problem that is created. In the end, the organizations can argue that they offer the best support and provide the best organizational outcome. The organization consequently learns to make use of the diversity in society to produce problems and directly offer a fitting solution. The contrast to the historical findings is striking: social service organizations no longer aim to make clients fit a notion of a normal population. Instead, diversity leads to specialization within social services (i.e., creating specific organizations and/or departments within organizations) to meet the needs of client groups. Accordingly, staff are also specialized in certain client groups. The problematization of clients, however, continues with no effort being made to ensure that clients are not only affected by social service organizations' decisions but can also participate in them.
This example raises the question of how to address learning processes affecting organizational culture. For us, the central questions are: Who is involved in organizing social services? How can the people who are processed by organizations (see Hasenfeld, 1972) have a say in how that organizing takes place? In the study described above, no one questioned the fact that only staff were considered to be members of the organization. This very common perspective on organizations is mirrored in most approaches to learning in organizations and organizational change. Moreover, diversity management mostly focuses on staff members. The difference between staff and clients, however, is the most important categorial difference that shapes all categorization processes in social work. Our argument here is that this difference, and the way this difference is processed in organizations, are central to the question of whether social service organizations further social justice and inclusion. The only way to democratize social services and by doing so to further inclusion in social work is to change the way this difference is processed in social service organizations.
We would like to suggest that, especially in the case of social service organizations that co-create their services with the clients, it is essential to create new forms for clients' participation in organizational processes. Based on this proposition, we need to think differently about the borders of social service organizations and the status of the different groups. All the people involved must be seen as part of organizational processes (with different statuses and roles). It is only then that diversity in society can be perceived as a starting point for joint learning experiences. As long as client/staff matching is the only way of dealing with the diversity that exists in society, learning, and inclusion will be prevented. There is a need to switch from the perspective of a resource-matching problem to a logic of learning from differences and including diverse groups in decision-making and processes of working together.

Conclusion
Based on the assumption that social work and social welfare systems are created to further social justice and inclusion, we explored the effect of organizing social services. Against the background of the theory of social justice developed by Iris Marion Young, we developed the argument that organizing social work leads to client groups' exclusion from decision-making and ultimately to a lack of the self-determination that is supposed to be at the centre of ethical deliberations in the social professions, and particularly in social work. The history of social exclusion through social work suggests that both peopleprocessing and people changing-organizations are characterized by a paradox. On the one hand, it is their task and proclaimed goal to further social justice and clients' inclusion, but on the other hand, they reproduce or generate exclusion. From the perspective of organizational education, we suggest that diversity and inclusion must be seen in social work against the background of the most important difference that overshadows all other differences in social service organizations: the difference between clients and staff. If inclusion means bringing all groups into positions where they can participate in decisions that affect them, then this difference and the resulting power differentials need to be addressed when organizing diversity in social service organizations. This does not mean neglecting the diversity found in society. It means instead understanding how differences between staff and clients, and the resulting power differentials, are related to the diversity and the categorization of diversity found in society. In the case of marginalized groups or Indigenous communities in settler colonial states, this power differential can be aggravated by these people being denied self-determination.
To achieve an understanding of differences and establish politics of difference, the perspective of organizational education is crucial as it opens up new ways of dealing with organizations. We argue that social service organizations develop organizational cultures that emerge through learning processes in, by, and between organizations. To change organizational cultures (and cultures of welfare systems), we have to enable learning processes. Following this line of argument, inclusion is not only something that requires the management of resources in organizations. Instead, inclusion must become part of the organizational culture and therefore an integral part of organizations.
There are two temporal perspectives that go hand in hand. On the one hand, an organization's culture is shaped by the way its history and memory are perceived and transmitted. Memory work such as telling stories or creating living archives in which documents, artefacts, pictures, etc., are made accessible, is important for organizational culture. On the other hand, it is important to analyse and understand the ways in which organizations learn and how this results in organizational knowledge that can be used to produce creativity and innovation. Again, the range of perspectives found in organizations is of crucial importance in organizational learning: Who is part of the organization? How do the different groups have access to the learning process? How do social service organizations deal with the groups' different perspectives? How do clients and staff with diverse backgrounds have the chance to influence the decisions that organizations make? We argue that the traditional approach of seeing staff members as part of social service organizations and clients as their environment is lacking. It hinders learning from diversity and prevents social service organizations from becoming inclusive and furthering social justice. Clients must be considered part of an organizational learning process, particularly in social service organizations where the way clients are classified is often related to stereotypes. As long as this is understood as individual cases of professional malpractice rather than a systemic issue, organizational dynamics can still unfold their devastating consequences.