This study uses the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) as case to study how racial formation in organizations is shaped by the changing institutional logics of race. It draws from the institutional logics perspective to advance theorizing on race in organizations as a multi-level process structured by societal race dynamics. It does so by studying three critical moments in the history of the NPS in which the organization was exposed, and had to respond to, varying logics of race.

In the first critical period, as the NPS began operation in the South, the organization was confronted with the realities of racial segregation that dictated a hierarchy along racial lines. In this period, I document and analyze how racial segregation clashed with the equality logic held by the organizational elite, unraveling a political process of active representation, conflict, and contestation. This section of the study provides a formidable view at how a federal agency grappled with the demands of two diametrically divergent constructs of race and their opposing prescriptions for action.

The second critical period analyzes the emergence of affirmative action as a new institutional logic in a post-Civil Rights Act environment. During this period, organizational members, particularly within the EEO and HR departments, were called to construct and enact an organizational approach to what policies ambiguously referred to as affirmative action. The organization follows suit by putting forth an infrastructure mostly concerned with the lack of representation of minorities within its ranks.

The last period analyzes new organizational dynamics in response to a U.S. society that is demographically diverse. Influential business leaders morphed diversity into the latest management imperative without which organizations lacked competitiveness. Appropriating these ideas by utilizing business consultants, the NPS began a transitional process of racial formation that emphasized plurality, reducing the role of race. Because this section of the study observed a transitional phase, there were counter logics that coexisted and interacted with the nascent diversity logic.

This study advances existing theorizing on race in organizations in many ways. It presses for an open system approach in order to account for societal level dynamics and how they shape organizational phenomena. However, it also shows that organizations are not mere victims, as they too have a hand in shaping social processes like racial formation. Finally, it adds much more fluidity (a process of social construction) to the way race manifests in organization, as opposed to the more static view many theories espouse.