This article suggests that a critical postmodern organizational perspective offers significant ways to assess an institution of higher education's effectiveness. The first part of the article outlines what is meant by "critical postmodernism" and then delineates a definition of multiculturalism in higher education based on the work of Henry Giroux, Michel Foucault, and bell hooks. Critical postmodernists see the individual as object and subject in history and locate action in a socio-historical realm that gets acted out on a cultural terrain that is contested, redefined, and resisted. Critical postmodernists believe that conflict is natural and to be fostered in the struggle for empowerment. This section also offers a definition of multiculturalism whereby it relates to the construction of ideas pertaining to issues such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. The second part develops a five-point organizational framework that an institution's participants may employ in assessing multiculturalism: (1) leadership, (2) structure, (3) decision-making, (4) finance, and (5) socialization. The framework is intended to provide a comprehensive way for an organization's participants to think about, and then analyze and change an institution's efforts toward increased multiculturalism. Contains 23 references. (JB)