WorkLab 2025
We are pleased to announce our first WorkLab activity for 2025.
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June 27th 2025, 11.00 CET
Online Webinar: Why 1 + 2 = Elephant: Polarization, Perception, and the Absence of Shared Reality at Work
Speaker: dr. Maja Graso, University of Groningen
Why do people working in the same organization interpret the same event or policy so differently? Why does the same issue spark protest in some and an eye-roll in others? And why have so many ordinary practices become sites of polarization?
This seminar explores the growing sense that today’s workplaces are not just divided by opinion, but by divergent judgments of what is fair, harmful, or good. It focuses especially on diversity, politicization, and the unintended consequences of well-meaning inclusion efforts - without offering easy answers or moral prescriptions.
Rather than a "how-to" session, this is a space to explore the deeper tensions that divide teams and institutions. From clashes over values to competing claims of exclusion, we ask why misunderstandings are intensifying, how interventions can backfire, and what it might take to move forward - imperfectly, but together.
Who should attend: Consultants, Managers, HR professionals, educators, and others navigating the front lines of inclusion, conflict, and workplace cohesion.
dr. Maja Graso
Maja investigates the factors that shape how people perceive visible and invisible harms in their social environments. Whereas visible threats - such as a fire threatening a community - tend to generate shared urgency and collective action, invisible harms often produce disagreement and division. Their ambiguity invites competing interpretations, making them more difficult to address in a coordinated and lasting way. Her research focuses on how people perceive harms they cannot directly observe and how they seek to resolve them. When individuals or groups disagree on what constitutes harm, whose interpretation should guide social norms, and how should organizations respond? Which interventions meant to address harm provide only superficial or temporary relief, while exacerbating deeper conflicts or undermining long-term peace?
Before joining the University of Groningen, Maja spent six years at the University of Otago in New Zealand and five years at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates, where she gained firsthand experience of Arab hospitality. Originally from Croatia, she has also lived in the Netherlands Antilles and studied and worked in the United States.
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