TY - JOUR
T1 - How Affirmative Action Became Diversity Management
T2 - Employer Response to Antidiscrimination Law, 1961 to 1996
AU - Kelly, Erin
AU - Dobbin, Frank
PY - 1998/4
Y1 - 1998/4
N2 - How did corporate affirmative action programs become diversity programs? During the 1970s, active federal enforcement of equal employment opportunity (EEO) and affirmative action (AA) law, coupled with ambiguity about the terms of compliance, stimulated employers to hire antidiscrimination specialists to fashion EEO/AA programs. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration curtailed enforcement, but as Philip Selznick's band of early institutionalists might have predicted, EEO/AA program practices had developed an organizational constituency in EEO/AA specialists and thus survived Reagan's enforcement cutbacks. As John Meyer's band of neoinstitutionalists might have predicted, that constituency collectively retheorized antidiscrimination practices through professional returns in terms of efficiency, using the rhetoric of diversity management.
AB - How did corporate affirmative action programs become diversity programs? During the 1970s, active federal enforcement of equal employment opportunity (EEO) and affirmative action (AA) law, coupled with ambiguity about the terms of compliance, stimulated employers to hire antidiscrimination specialists to fashion EEO/AA programs. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration curtailed enforcement, but as Philip Selznick's band of early institutionalists might have predicted, EEO/AA program practices had developed an organizational constituency in EEO/AA specialists and thus survived Reagan's enforcement cutbacks. As John Meyer's band of neoinstitutionalists might have predicted, that constituency collectively retheorized antidiscrimination practices through professional returns in terms of efficiency, using the rhetoric of diversity management.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0032219999&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1177/0002764298041007008
DO - 10.1177/0002764298041007008
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0032219999
SN - 0002-7642
VL - 41
SP - 960
EP - 984
JO - American Behavioral Scientist
JF - American Behavioral Scientist
IS - 7
ER -