Campus Location
Dallas Campus (Online)
Date of Award
7-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Department
Organizational Leadership
Degree Name
Doctor of Education
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Jennifer Butcher
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
Deardra Hayes-Whigham
Third Committee Member or Committee Reader
Dianne Reed
Abstract
The intersectional challenges of Black women in legal support roles are an overlooked phenomenon in organizational research. Despite diversity efforts in the legal profession, Black women face challenges due to gender, race, and professional status that impact their career advancement, as well as their mental and psychological well-being. As a result of experiencing the effects of racialized workplace dynamics and destructive leadership behaviors, Black women in legal support roles find resilience through self-protection strategies while working through the effects of intersecting forms of oppression in legal workspaces. This study addressed the lack of knowledge of the lived experiences of Black women in legal support roles when dealing with workplace conflict, as well as their perspectives on the role of leadership support in conflict navigation. Guided by a theoretical framework that integrates Black feminist thought, psychological safety theory, and conflict theory, the purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how Black women in legal support roles navigated psychological safety amid workplace conflict while working within in-house legal departments in the United States. Using the interpretive phenomenology framework, this qualitative research included semistructured interviews of 11 Black women in legal support roles who work or have worked in-house in legal departments, offering them an opportunity to create knowledge through their reflections. Participants completed semistructured interviews recorded through Zoom. The data were thoroughly reviewed using pattern coding and thematic analysis to combine and organize the key findings into themes. The study findings revealed that psychological safety is not universally accessible, as participants described the constant need to manage stereotypes and hyper-surveillance, and often chose to self-protect through disengagement or silence during conflict. The findings highlight the identity-informed and relational nature of psychological safety and offer a deeper understanding of resilience, power, and exclusion in legal workspaces through the lens of Black feminist thought, psychological safety theory, and conflict theory. The findings call for more identity-conscious leadership that considers race, gender, and professional status in order to consider the unique challenges faced by Black women in legal support roles and foster more equitable work environments.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Bradden, Chanel M., "Under the Legal Lens: Navigating Psychological Safety and Conflict for Black Women in Legal Support Roles" (2025). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 920.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/920