Whiteness and organizations: institutions, legitimacy, and hegemony

While scholars have made a clear case for the idea that organizations are racialized, this paper asks: racialized as what? We argue that in societies structured by white supremacy, most organizations are not generically racialized but are fundamentally organized through hegemonic whiteness. Past conceptualizations have often treated whiteness as something specific to those racialized as white (embodied whiteness) or as an individual credential. Here we argue whiteness also functions as a structuring institutional logic that shapes what is considered legitimate, professional, and valuable across organizational settings. Drawing on literature in racialized organizations, institutional theory, and racial ideology, we theorize whiteness as a flexible, aspirational force embedded in both the formal and informal dimensions of organizations. We conclude by examining how alternative or fugitive organizational spaces disrupt dominant logics, while remaining constrained by the broader racialized social systems in which they are embedded.