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Diversity Initiatives in the US Workplace: A Brief History, Their Intended and Unintended Consequences

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dc.contributor.authorPortocarrero, Sandra
dc.contributor.authorCarter, James T.
dc.date.accessioned2023-11-27T20:38:52Z
dc.date.available2023-11-27T20:38:52Z
dc.date.issued2022
dc.description.abstractDiversity initiatives are designed to help workers from disadvantaged backgrounds achieve equitable opportunities and outcomes in organizations. However, these programs are often ineffective. To better understand less-than-desired outcomes and the shifting diversity landscape, we synthesize literature on how corporate affirmative action programs became diversity initiatives and current literature on their effectiveness. We focus specifically on work dealing with mechanisms that make diversity initiatives effective as well as their unintended consequences. When taken together, these literature point to several inequality-specific omissions in contemporary discussions of organizational diversity initiatives, such as the omission of racial inequality. As we contend in the first section of this review, without affirmative action law, which initially tasked US employers with ending racial discrimination at the workplace, we would not have diversity initiatives. We conclude by providing directions for future research and elaborating on several core foci that scholars might pursue to better (re)connect issues of organizational diversity with the aims of equity, equality and social justice.
dc.identifier.citationPortocarrero, S., & Carter, J. T. (2021). Diversity initiatives in the US workplace: A brief history, their intended and unintended consequences. Social Compass, 16(7).
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/113711
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherElsevier
dc.relation.doihttps://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.13001
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectaffirmative action
dc.subjectdiversity initiatives
dc.subjectorganizations
dc.subjectUS workplace
dc.titleDiversity Initiatives in the US Workplace: A Brief History, Their Intended and Unintended Consequences
dc.typearticle
dcterms.licensehttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/113709
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schema.accessibilityHazardnone
schema.accessibilitySummaryaccessible pdf

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