Equal opportunity in the workplace is thought to be the direct legacy of the civil rights and feminist movements and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, as Frank Dobbin demonstrates, ...corporate personnel experts--not Congress or the courts--were the ones who determined what equal opportunity meant in practice, designing changes in how employers hire, promote, and fire workers, and ultimately defining what discrimination is, and is not, in the American imagination. Dobbin shows how Congress and the courts merely endorsed programs devised by corporate personnel. He traces how the first measures were adopted by military contractors worried that the Kennedy administration would cancel their contracts if they didn't take "affirmative action" to end discrimination. These measures built on existing personnel programs, many designed to prevent bias against unionists. Dobbin follows the changes in the law as personnel experts invented one wave after another of equal opportunity programs. He examines how corporate personnel formalized hiring and promotion practices in the 1970s to eradicate bias by managers; how in the 1980s they answered Ronald Reagan's threat to end affirmative action by recasting their efforts as diversity-management programs; and how the growing presence of women in the newly named human resources profession has contributed to a focus on sexual harassment and work/life issues.
Awarded a Silver Medal in the category Human Resources and Employee Training from the 2014 Axiom Business Book Awards
Create the inclusive, high performance workforce needed to succeed in an ...increasing multicultural society and global marketplace
Learn how global organizations and leading professional associations develop integrated HR/diversity talent strategies, and the specific challenges they face
Get practical tools to assess integrated HR/diversity strategic planning, and see why organizations are not making more diversity progress
Develop specific performance indicators to track your progress in implementing synergistic HR/diversity approaches
Case studies of SHRM, federal and state government, global corporations, and higher education illustrate systematic, integrated HR/diversity effortsFor HR professionals and leaders, chief diversity officers, line managers, and executives in the private and public sectors and higher education, this book presents a systematic approach to integrating HR practices and strategic diversity initiatives to create the inclusive, high performance workforce that every enterprise and institution needs to succeed in an increasingly multicultural society and global marketplace.The authors' point of departure is that talent is the primary strategic asset necessary for organizational survival and success in a demographically diversifying and globally interconnected world. Organizations seeking to attain their full potential in this new talent frontier must optimize their human capital resources by the deliberate development of synergy between human resource (HR) and diversity programs. Failure to integrate and coordinate these two functions will erode organizational competitiveness, whether it is in developing new markets, products, programs, or services.As the first book to provide a concrete roadmap to integrated HR and diversity strategy, the authors identify two critical practices: talent management through the orchestration of HR and diversity programs to enhance organizational capability by unleashing, mobilizing, nurturing, and sustaining the contributions of a diverse and talented workforce; and talent sustainability through the close integration of HR and diversity to continuously develop systems, structures, processes, and a culture that heighten employee commitment, engagement, and inclusion. They further believe that there should be a commonality of practice across all types of organizations, and that each sector can learn from the others to accelerate its adaptation to today's rapidly shifting national and global realities.Based on the most current research and on interviews with HR and diversity leaders in major organizations, this book provides the reader with concrete strategies and practical tools for implementing a successful and sustainable talent management program. It also addresses common barriers to the development of synergistic HR and diversity strategy, and how to overcome them.Given the evolutionary nature of the integration of HR and diversity, the authors present nine extensive case studies from all organizational sectors, as well as from the two leading Human Resource professional associations - the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR) - to illustrate the dynamic intersection between HR and diversity practices.
What's your strategy to remain competitive? Trainers realize that recruiting the right people with the right skills and providing them with great training is key to creating a great business. With ...the arrival of measurement and return-on-investment calculations for these key business activities comes the realization from business professionals that performance management does make a difference in profits, sales, and customer satisfaction. With a company's need to recruit and keep the best talent, performance management is its best strategy for remaining competitive in the global marketplace in which employees have more choices than ever before. Performance management is used to improve both personal and organizational skills. Recruiting and Retaining Call Center Employees illustrates the various ways employees can reach their potential and thereby contribute to the bottom line, made all the more profitable by creating stronger and more stable companies that can offer higher wages and excellent benefit packages. Combining theory with practical advice on training, recruiting, and evaluating programs, this book provides the trainer with practical models and guides. Plus, cases on process and technology provide a full range of solutions in creating a call center that is well ahead of the competition. ASTD is proud to present the 22nd book in the IN ACTION series: 11 cases that provide numerous examples of performance management programs in diverse applications. One basic premise remains constant in all of the applications: People matter most, and, when they adopt a relationship-based leadership style, the workplace becomes successful. Performance management involves all willing participants creating a learning environment together.
This unique study uncovers the lives and working conditions of a group of individuals who are usually rendered invisible on college campuses--the custodians who daily clean the offices, residence ...halls, bathrooms and public spaces. In doing so it also reveals universities' equally invisible practices that frequently contradict their espoused values of inclusion and equity, and their profession that those on the margins are important members of the campus community.This vivid ethnography is the fruit of the year's fieldwork that Peter Magolda's undertook at two universities. His purpose was to shine a light on a subculture that neither decision-makers nor campus community members know very much about, let alone understand the motivations and aspirations of those who perform this work; and to pose fundamental questions about the moral implications of the corporatization of higher education and its impact on its lowest paid and most vulnerable employees.Working alongside and learning about the lives of over thirty janitorial staff, Peter Magolda becomes privy to acts of courage, resilience, and inspiration, as well as witness to their work ethic, and to instances of intolerance, inequity, and injustices. We learn the stories of remarkable people, and about their daily concerns, their fears and contributions.Peter Magolda raises such questions as: Does the academy still believe wisdom is exclusive to particular professions or classes of people? Are universities really inclusive? Is addressing service workers' concerns part of the mission of higher education? If universities profess to value education, why make it difficult for those on the margins, such as custodians, to "get educated."The book concludes with the research participants' and the author's reflections about ways that colleges can improve the lives of those whose underpaid and unremarked labor is so essential to the smooth running of their campuses.Appendices provide information about the research methodo
The Challenges of Minoritized Faculty in Higher Education offers a probing and unvarnished look at the employment challenges of these faculty members in four-year institutions. With dramatic shifts ...in the faculty workforce and nearly three-quarters of instructional positions in United States institutions now off the tenure track, contingent faculty have become the essential, frontline workers of higher education. Remarkably little research attention has focused on the experiences of minoritized contingent faculty in this new academic underclass. Based on in-depth interviews coupled with extensive research, the book highlights the double marginalization that can occur due to secondary employment status in the academic hierarchy, and the exclusion resulting from the intersectionality of nondominant social identities including race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability. As the first-person narratives reveal, these faculty often struggle for acceptance, recognition, and rewards in the day-to-day academic environment, and they can face devaluation of their contributions. As a pragmatic and concrete resource, this book offers proactive workforce strategies and key structural and policy recommendations that will assist academic and administrative leaders, including presidents, provosts, department chairs, and chief diversity officers, in building more inclusive working conditions for contingent faculty.
