(Illustration by Nancy Marks)
Organizations of all kinds must expect that the people within them will have differing viewpoints, and it is important to acknowledge the value of disagreement. Studies show that people generally govern themselves more wisely when they deliberate and consider diverse ideas, and when handled skillfully, disagreement can improve organizational performance and cohesion.
Learning to disagree well is also a civic act. Organizations that create conditions for constructive dissent help sustain democratic habits. Indeed, some argue that a central deficit of contemporary democracy is a widespread failure in many countries to embrace productive dissent and deliberation within civic and political culture.
Although institutional types and goals differ widely, with a deliberate approach and the right tools, leaders and their teams can transform conflict into the kind of constructive disagreement a healthy civic environment requires. They can foster ongoing negotiation, mutual recognition, and shared agreement on what to do despite areas of disagreement.
Strength Through Disagreement: Three Examples
The examples that follow—one from a social movement, one from our own higher education institution, and one from the private sector—highlight how context can shape efforts to cultivate productive dissent and how institutions can discuss and select their own guidelines for disagreement when they are challenged from outside.
1. The American Civil Rights Movement
From roughly 1955 to 1963, the American Civil Rights Movement encompassed substantial and often vigorous disagreements. The movement included strong voices advocating different approaches to change, including street confrontation, legal strategies grounded in the US Constitution, and electoral strategies to enlist large numbers of white voters and moderates. Members of the movement also disagreed about its ultimate goals. Some sought equal legal rights, some democratic socialism, and leading civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. himself called for a national spiritual rebirth. These diverse views meant that organizations like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the National Urban League, at times, competed for followers, political influence, media attention, and funding.
Yet this internal disagreement also served as a resource. It kept the movement broad and flexible, attracting people with diverse values and enriching its deliberations. Andrew Young, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), worked with King, SCLC’s former president, in the early 1960s, and recalled that King “usually could bring us together, but he always let us fight it out for ourselves for a long time. And the only time he really got mad with me was when I wouldn’t disagree with everybody. … A movement needed wild ideas and radical notions, but it also needed to be pulled back into perspective to do something that was actually doable and attainable.”
According to Young, King modeled a leadership skill: cultivating disagreement and channeling it into deliberation. The SCLC and its partners in the broader movement employed many practical methods for this purpose, including holding regular strategy meetings that fostered solidarity despite intense disagreement, as well as through music, food, and celebration.
Although the movement did not always live into its broad vision of justice and equity, perhaps most notably with regard to its treatment of women, and at times strained under pressure, including conflicts between SCLC and the SNCC, the classical phase of the American Civil Rights Movement not only tolerated but also sometimes cultivated disagreement and elevated leaders who embraced dissent. These practices helped it win concrete gains while also strengthening democratic habits beyond the movement itself.
2. Tufts University and Institutional Pluralism
Even as surveys indicate that Americans continue to view higher education favorably, many believe universities handle disagreement poorly and exhibit political bias.
One flashpoint has been institutional statements. In recent years, in response to domestic and international crises, senior institutional leaders, university presidents among them, have made public statements. For instance, Tufts University’s administration made statements about racial justice after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and against Hamas after the attacks on Israeli civilians in 2023. While some faculty, staff, and students believed that these and similar statements were important, others believed that the statements spoke for the whole community in ways that could chill the speech of anyone who disagreed. A professor or student might refrain from saying things that countered the view of the institution’s president for fear of losing opportunities and rewards, or even being disciplined.
At least 148 institutions of higher education have adopted policies modeled on the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Report (formally titled, “Kalven Committee: Report on the University’s Role in Political and Social Action.” The report essentially bans the university administration from taking positions on political or social issues, except in extraordinary circumstances, and insists on “institutional neutrality” to help preserve freedom of expression for individual faculty and students.
Yet our view is that neutrality is impossible and a misleading goal. The Kalven Report asserts that the university “is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.” However, universities are not only communities of scholars; they are also centrally organized nonprofits with employees, investments, real estate, and local influence. The University of Chicago itself, for example, played a role in the development of atomic weapons and deliberately shaped the South Side of Chicago in its own interests and often at the expense of Black residents.
If neutrality is impossible, pluralism is an essential ideal. In this context, pluralism means promoting an abundance of viewpoints to advance rigorous inquiry and creative exploration across disciplines. At Tufts University, a faculty-led working group considered adopting a version of the Kalven Report. But the group’s final report instead calls on the university to focus on the conditions required to sustain and enrich pluralism. As an example of a practical initiative, Tufts has established the Vuslat Foundation Generous Listening and Dialogue Initiative to study how and when people experience disagreement productively, and to teach students and others to disagree better.
3. Costco and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
The multinational corporation Costco offers a for-profit example of how clearly articulated principles and durable governing practices can support resilience in the face of external pressure. Recently, Costco faced a shareholder proposal challenging its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies alongside criticism from elected officials. But the company had long been subject to scrutiny even before this episode. Beginning in the mid-2000s, analysts and investors questioned its capped product markups, above-industry wages, and resistance to short-term profit maximization.
Unlike the American Civil Rights Movement or a university—where disagreement often originates from internal members—Costco, like many corporations, has frequently been on the receiving end of public contestation from shareholders, political actors, and market commentators. Central to this contestation has been the company’s operating model, described by management scholar Zeynep Ton as a “good jobs” strategy, which ties above-market wages, stable scheduling, and employee development to long-term performance.
Over time, Costco has embedded this strategy into durable institutional practices, such as capped markups, promotion-from-within norms, relatively high wages and benefits, and board-level governance processes that formalize how to weigh stakeholder interests. These guardrails have shaped the company’s responses to external criticism, including challenges to its DEI commitments.
For many organizations, external scrutiny becomes a test of institutional integrity, revealing whether pressure leads to reactive shifts or principled steadiness. Clear institutional guidelines rooted in durable values can mitigate the destabilizing effects of external pressure and enable organizations to respond without abandoning core commitments.
Dimensions of Difference
All of these cases illustrate the value of disagreeing well. However, they differ in important ways that leaders need to consider when deciding how to address disagreement within their own institutions.
First, organizations differ in whether disagreement or (more broadly) discourse and communication is a central function. The Civil Rights Movement existed to change the opinions and values of the American people, as well as policies and laws. It needed a coherent view along with healthy internal disagreement. A university plays an important civic function as a location for free and continuous debate. Agreement is less valuable in a university than in a movement, and disagreement is more so. Finally, the objective of a for-profit corporation is not to debate positions or ideas. Still, Costco had to address disagreements about its operating model and DEI.
Leaders of conventional for-profit firms in particular tend to assess disagreement instrumentally, asking whether it benefits organizational performance. As Ahmmad Brown, who developed the idea for this article series, and Pamela Coukos have previously noted, disagreement can be good for the bottom line. Making space for differing perspectives and approaches can strengthen collaboration, productivity, and team effectiveness.
Yet effectively managing disagreement is not simply a matter of productivity and efficiency. The workplace remains one of the few settings in which individuals from diverse backgrounds regularly collaborate to address shared problems. As a result, organizations can function, whether intentionally or incidentally, as sites for the cultivation of civic skills.
Second, institutions have different forms of membership. A for-profit firm can choose whom it employs and can fire employees who do not support its goals. A university can choose students and professors, but most have adopted policies to protect academic freedom, including the freedom to dissent and criticize the institution. These policies include freedom of expression and due process rights for students, as well as tenure for faculty. As a result, a university cannot exclude someone for disagreeing peacefully.
Meanwhile, a social movement can, to some extent, selectively recruit participants and marginalize dissenters, but it needs members and must accommodate people with diverse views, or risk shrinking and becoming ideologically narrow. Thus, it must accept disagreement. And although we did not offer a case of a democratic community, such as a town or state, these communities are obliged to protect everyone’s freedom of speech as a right, regardless of whether individuals dissent and provoke controversy.
Enduring Frameworks to Guide Behavior
Disagreement is not merely instrumental to democracy; it is intrinsic to it. Yet disagreement must be structured and governed if it is to remain productive rather than corrosive. Political theorists have long underscored this tension: Hannah Arendt argued that a good life requires consequential debate among equals who are meaningfully different; Jürgen Habermas insisted that collective legitimacy depends on free, inclusive, and reasoned deliberation; and Albert Hirschman identified three responses to dissatisfaction—voice, exit, and loyalty—each of which, under the right conditions, can strengthen an organization.
The challenge, then, is institutional: How can organizations expect disagreement, sustain it, and still preserve shared purpose and legitimacy? While there is no single approach to effectively managing and benefiting from disagreement, cultivating diversity and creating an environment where everyone has a voice are valuable practices across all contexts—regardless of organizational type—and at the individual, organizational, and civic levels.
Leaders must attend to two related responsibilities. Internally, they must protect and encourage voice by clarifying decision rules, distinguishing disagreement from disloyalty, and building routines that prevent conflict from hardening into factionalism. Externally, they must establish clear guardrails for responding to dissenting public voices, including those from activists, shareholders, elected officials, and the media. When organizations become the object of public disagreement, the question is not whether pressure will arise, but whether their principles are strong enough to guide their response.
Clear commitments, embedded in durable practices and governance structures, help prevent reactive shifts driven by momentary outrage or market fluctuation. They allow organizations to absorb criticism, weigh competing claims, and respond without abandoning core values. In doing so, institutions do more than manage disagreement; they demonstrate how pluralistic societies can remain steady amid strain.
Organizations that invest in the structures and norms that make disagreement constructive—both internally and in response to external scrutiny—help sustain the civic habits on which democratic life depends. In an era of polarized public discourse, institutions that learn to govern both expression and response become quiet stabilizers of the democratic order.
Correction: March 17, 2026 | This article originally noted that Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians occured in 2024. This has been updated to 2023.
Read more stories by Peter Levine & Dayna L. Cunningham.