Inventing equal opportunity / Frank Dobbin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dobbin, Frank.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Discrimination in employment--United States.

Discrimination in employment.

Affirmative action programs--United States.

Affirmative action programs.

Diversity in the workplace--United States.

Diversity in the workplace.

Sexual harassment of women--United States.

Sexual harassment of women.

Civil rights--United States.

Civil rights.

Personnel management--United States.

Personnel management.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (321 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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 1970's to eradicate bias by managers; how in the 1980's 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. Inventing Equal Opportunity reveals how the personnel profession devised--and ultimately transformed--our understanding of discrimination.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1. Regulating Discrimination

2. Washington Outlaws Discrimination with a Broad Brush

3. The End of Jim Crow

4. Washington Means Business

5. Fighting Bias with Bureaucracy

6. The Reagan Revolution and the Rise of Diversity Management

7. The Feminization of HR and Work-Family Programs

8. Sexual Harassment as Employment Discrimination

9. How Personnel Defined Equal Opportunity

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612259203

9781282259201

1282259202

9781400830893

1400830893

OCLC:

438771973