THE EVOLUTION OF DIVERSITY MANAGEMENT

In a number of ways, this chapter work provides a baseline or foundation for understanding organizational efforts to manage diversity. Additional insight into the chronology of organizational is provided through further analysis of carefully selected studies designed to describe the development of diversity management and the extent to which organizations have approached the issue of diversity. Two additional important findings emerged from this chronology. First, research shows that some organizations have simply repackaged their traditional equal employment opportunity and affirmative action programs. These organizations have not, it would seem, fully embraced the broader concept of diversity management as reflected in the literature. Second, some organizations do not address some of the most basic and traditional dimensions of diversity such as race, ethnicity or gender. This raises a number of fundamental and intriguing questions about the content and purpose of diversity management programs within those organizations.

Equal-Employment Opportunity

Following the days of segregation, workplaces were faced with a new business challenge—albeit one that was viewed not so much as a challenge, but rather a mandate—of complying with the proliferation of legislation and regulations that required organizations to increase racial and gender variation in order to meet federal equal-employment opportunity requirements. The first legislation of its kind in the early 1960s, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was landmark legislation that made it illegal for employers with more than fifteen employees to discriminate in hiring, termination, promotion, compensation, job training, or any other term or condition of employment based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Since then, Title VII has been supplemented with legislation prohibiting pregnancy, age, and disability discrimination and sexual harassment. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is charged with enforcing Title VII.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925 into law, thereby setting affirmative-action policies in motion. In the beginning, affirmative action was considered a positive weapon to combat racial discrimination. The language of the order stated that it was the "policy of the United States to encourage by affirmative action the elimination of discrimination" (Katznelson, 2005, p. 145).

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Executive Order 11246, which went one step further. The order prohibited federal contractors and federally assisted construction contractors and subcontractors that did more than $10,000 in government business in one year from discriminating in employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Contractors were also required to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin" (Katznelson, 2005, p. 145). Affirmative-action programs required employers to set goals to increase the utilization of underrepresented groups to achieve parity based on their labor-force availability. The Department of Labor 's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) was charged with enforcement of Executive Order 11246.

Because the legislation focused on "protected class" employees (i.e., discrimination was illegal based on race, ethnicity, sex, or religion initially; protection for other groups, such as people with disabilities, came later), nonmembers of these groups oft en resented their exclusion and believed that affirmative action led to the hiring of unqualified candidates and to preferential treatment for the targeted groups.

Affirmative-action policies were enacted during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, but they grew under President Richard M. Nixon. Employers and educators were required to take race into account in order to redress the disparate treatment and impact against people in protected classes. Organizations were held liable for discrimination if their policies and procedures effectively excluded people in protected classes or diminished their opportunity—even if that was not the intent of the policy or procedure. This effectively shift ed the burden of proof of discrimination from the employee to the organization.

Affirmative action has been deemed the single most important factor accounting for the growth and sustainment of the African American middle class (Katznelson, 2005; Patterson, 1997). A public policy, it has proven to be one of the most effective tools to advance the nation's commitment to the ideals of equality and fairness. Yet despite all of the gains in access and equality for racial minorities and women attributed to affirmative action, the policies have been challenged politically and legally. Consequently, affirmative action has reached an impasse and has come under increasing scrutiny. Efforts to circumscribe affirmative action began in the late 1970s and gained the support of President Ronald W. Reagan when he was elected in 1980. During his administration, Reagan appointed Cabinet members—and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, an African American man—who were opponents of affirmative action (Goode & Baldwin, 2005; Barry & Bateman, 1996).

One of the reasons affirmative action has come under scrutiny is because of its focus on race. The focus on women's gains through affirmative action has been all but eliminated from the current discussion on the policies. Instead, the discussion has been on racial preferences and benefits for African Americans and on the supposed reverse discrimination against whites. Ironically, women—particularly white women—have joined the ranks of those wanting to dismantle affirmative-action policies. Several scholars (Wise, 1997; Beckhard, 1969) argue that white women perceive that affirmative action prevents their husbands and sons from getting jobs.

Another reason for the opposition mounting against affirmative action is a belief by opponents that race-based considerations run counter to the ideal of color-blind equality. Consequently, most nonwhites believe they have experienced a backlash due to affirmative action, including having their qualifications questioned. African American men have failed to enjoy the same protections under Title VII and affirmative-action policies as African American women (Lacy, 2008; Beynon, 1973). Some believe that African American men have benefited the least from affirmative action.

Initially, affirmative action enabled African American men to gain roles in corporations that had been off-limits to them or roles that were created to focus on affirmative action or racial issues (Collins, 1997; Boje & Winsor, 1993). However, those racialized roles created dead-end jobs for many African American men as affirmative-action policies were scaled back. After the early 1970s, companies attempting to conform more expediently to affirmative-action goals began increasing their hiring of African American women because of the ability to double-count women (Lacy, 2008; Boyce, 1995). Lacy argues that this practice demonstrates that overlapping race and gender categories reduces African American women's attributes to commodities and virtually eliminates the affirmative-action consideration accorded African Americans. According to Lacy, African American men do not benefit in employment from privilege by gender; rather, they are totally separated from white men when blackness, a traditionally disenfranchised category, is combined with maleness, normally considered a privileged one.

Stewart (2007) also addresses the need for race and gender considerations in hiring, but extends that same consideration in examining the hiring of African American men. Stewart argues that companies with entrenched racism must go further than proclaiming they are equal-opportunity employers. Rather, their affirmative-action plans must include a race-plus-gender (e.g., African American males) provision.

In the late 1970s, the Supreme Court, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, held in a closely divided decision that race could be one of the factors considered in choosing a diverse student body in university-admissions decisions. The court also held, however, that the use of quotas in such affirmative-action programs was not permissible; thus, the University of California Davis Medical School had, by maintaining a 16 percent nonwhite quota, discriminated against Allan Bakke.

Glass Ceiling

The glass ceiling remains a pervasive fixture in the corporate workplace. While some acknowledge that women and nonwhites have begun to break the so-called glass ceiling (Hill & Fox 1973; Cobbs & Turnock, 2003, p. 215), others agree that the ceiling may be higher on the ladder to power than it once was (Rosenkranz, 2007; Cao, Clarke & Lahaney, 2003). Evidence that the ceiling continues to exist in corporate America is well-represented in the literature (Barrett, 2000; Palmer, 2005; Phelps & Constantine, 2001 ). Johnson-Bailey and Tisdell (1998) found the ceiling still has different meanings for different groups. Bell and Nkomo (2001) used the metaphor of a concrete wall to distinguish between the organizational experiences of white and African American women managers, finding African American women experience a concrete wall—a structure that is not only more difficult to penetrate, but one that cuts them off from the mainstream of organizational life and makes them invisible to decision makers on the other side.

African American men have a similar characterization of the glass ceiling. They call the barrier to upward mobility a brick wall. In a 1995 report by the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission, African American male executives voiced a concern that the rise and acceptance of other nonwhites had created a stalemate in their career development. They noted that their talents, education, and experience were devalued in corporate America, and they feared they were on the losing side of a zero-sum game, where the progress of one nonwhite group was achieved at the expense of another nonwhite group.

A 1997 US Department of Labor report acknowledged that the glass ceiling did appear to be lower for nonwhites than it was for women. This conclusion may support earlier contentions that race is a determining factor of inequity in the United States, but that when race and gender are at play in employment hiring and promotion, the ceiling seems to be lower for nonwhite men than it is for women (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 2006; Charmaz, 2000).

Diversity Management

The Hudson Institute has oft en been credited with sending a wake-up call to employers across the country by documenting the increasing diversity of the American labor force. In their report Workforce 2000, the institute warned that existing HR policies and practices that were developed when the workforce was hugely young, white, and male would become ineffective as the workforce became increasingly older, less white, and composed of more women (Johnston & Packer, 1997; Chatman & O'Reilly, 2004). To recruit and retain needed employees in such a diverse labor market, Johnston and Packer argued that it would be necessary for organizations to take intentional actions to ensure that their work environments were open to people from varied backgrounds. Eventually, significant literature emerged urging employers to adopt diversity-management strategies that would allow them to achieve that end and warning them of dire consequences if they did not.

The Hudson Institute study also predicted that in addition to an aging workforce and greater racial diversification in the labor market, rapid technological change and globalization would require diverse skills and education that would forever change the employment landscape. The Hudson report introduced a paradigm that shift ed the discussion from how to comply with legal mandates to how to assimilate large numbers of women and nonwhites into existing homogeneous, mostly white organizational cultures. The assimilation approach, which focused on promoting equal opportunity, sought to increase conformity to the dominant homogeneous culture's ways of thinking and behaving.

Nonwhite employees resented and even challenged the notion that they were neither recognized nor appreciated for their individual differences. They rejected the melting-pot view that emerged in the early 1980s because it minimized unique individual differences rather than appreciating them. As a result, the term diversity was introduced into mainstream business language and management literature. Initially, many organizations defined diversity according to legally protected attributes such as race, gender, and age. As the concept evolved, organizations began to use a much broader definition, which included the entire spectrum of human differences.

One of the earliest contributors to the literature on diversity management was Roosevelt Thomas Jr., who argued that as the labor force became increasingly diverse, it would be necessary to move "from affirmative action to affirming diversity" (Thomas, 1990, p. 112). Dr. Thomas suggested that the goal should be to promote productivity within organizations by enhancing the ability of all employees to achieve as much as their potential would allow and to do it without artificial programs, standards, or barriers. Moreover, Thomas described diversity as being not just about race, ethnicity, and gender. Rather, it included other ways in which people differed from one another, including age, background, education, work role, and personality. Other advocates for diversity management who followed Thomas also attempted to distance themselves from traditional equal-employment opportunity and affirmative-action programs.

Affirmative action, in particular, is a controversial concept, with vocal opponents who argue that it violates a deeply ingrained American value that advancement should be based solely on merit. As a result, a number of organizations have gone to great lengths to make explicit the distinction between equal-employment opportunity, affirmative action, and diversity management. This may be attributed to the transitional years when the corporate world had already begun to experience difficulty in achieving its affirmative-action goals.

While recruiting underrepresented groups posed a significant challenge, retaining women and nonwhites was (and continues to be) an even greater problem. Because of the revolving-door syndrome, significantly higher voluntary and involuntary attrition among women and nonwhites was a common phenomenon. Concerned about this disparity, companies began to conduct interviews with women and nonwhites still on the payroll to develop better retention strategies. Early efforts, which centered on achieving a numerically representative workforce with respect to race, gender, and ethnicity, most likely contributed to diversity management being seen as synonymous with affirmative action. These perceptions also resulted in the Civil Rights milestones being seen as the origin of diversity and efforts to achieve representation being referred to as diversity management. As expected, race-relations training and other efforts were also seen as diversity management. Overlapping aspirations and work efforts created confusion and blurred the distinction between the different approaches.

Diversity management as a business strategy attempts to embrace and leverage all employee differences to benefit the organization. As a result, managing all workers well has become the focus of many corporate diversity-management initiatives. Figure 1 shows the stages that diversity management has gone through as the field has evolved over the years. It also illustrates how diversity management as a strategy differs from policies and programs such as equal-employment opportunity and affirmative action.