CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 2,055Gender Diversity and InequalityCareer Development and DiversityNames, Identity, and Discrimination Research

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 152 of the 155 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Best Practices or Best Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies

Open access
Kalev, Alexandra, Dobbin, Frank, Kelly, Erin·2006·American Sociological Review
DOI 10.1177/000312240607100404
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Employers have experimented with three broad approaches to promoting diversity. Some programs are designed to establish organizational responsibility for diversity, others to moderate managerial bias through training and feedback, and still others to reduce the social isolation of women and minority workers. These approaches find support in academic theories of how organizations achieve goals, how stereotyping shapes hiring and promotion, and how networks influence careers. This is the first systematic analysis of their efficacy. The analyses rely on federal data describing the workforces of 708 private sector establishments from 1971 to 2002, coupled with survey data on their employment practices. Efforts to moderate managerial bias through diversity training and diversity evaluations are least effective at increasing the share of white women, black women, and black men in management. Efforts to attack social isolation through mentoring and networking show modest effects. Efforts to establish responsibility for diversity lead to the broadest increases in managerial diversity. Moreover, organizations that establish responsibility see better effects from diversity training and evaluations, networking, and mentoring. Employers subject to federal affirmative action edicts, who typically assign responsibility for compliance to a manager, also see stronger effects from some programs. This work lays the foundation for an institutional theory of the remediation of workplace inequality.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/000312240607100404

Cites

152 of 152 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Citations

Cites

Show all 155 references

Research works printed but not linked: 28

  1. Bisom-Rapp Susan, 1999, Florida State University Law Review, 26, 959
  2. Bureau of National Affairs., 1986, Work and Family: A Changing Agenda.
  3. Catalyst., 1998, Advancing Women in Business - the Catalyst Guide: Best Practices from the Corporate Leaders.
  4. Crow Kelly, 2003, New York Times, G2
  5. Edelman Lauren B., Hamilton Krieger Linda, Eliason Scott, Albiston K. T. 2005. “Judicial Deference to Institutionalized Compliance Strategies.” Working Paper Thesis, Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley, CA.
  6. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)., 1998, “Best Practices of Private Sector Employers.”
  7. Fisher Anne B., 1985, Fortune, 26
  8. Fretz C. F., 1973, Harvard Business Review, 133
  9. Granovetter Mark, 1974, Getting a Job: A Study of Contracts and Careers.
  10. Greene W. H., 1997, Econometric Analysis.
  11. Heckman James J., 1989, American Economic Review, 79, 138
  12. Kalev Alexandra, Law and Social Inquiry.
  13. Kelly Erin 2000. “Corporate Family Policies in U.S. Organizations, 1965–1997.” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Sociology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ.
  14. King Mary C., 1992, Monthly Labor Review, 115, 30
  15. Liberman Vadim, 2003, Across the Board, 51
  16. Lunding F. S., 1979, Harvard Business Review, 56, 89
  17. Milkman Ruth, 1985, Women, Work, and Protest: A Century of Women's Labor History
  18. Miller Joanne, 1994, Corporate Responses to Diversity.
  19. Moore Paul Cameron. 2001. “The Transfer of Human and Social Capital: Employee Development Through Assigned Peer Mentoring.” Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford, CA.
  20. Presidential Glass Ceiling Commission., 1995, A Solid Investment: Making a Full Use of our Nations' Human Capital.
  21. Roche Gerard R., 1979, Harvard Business Review, 57, 14
  22. Skaggs Sheryl 2001. “Discrimination Litigation: Implications for Women and Minorities in Retail Supermarket Management.” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Sociology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC.
  23. Society for Human Resources Management., 2004, “What Are The Components of a Successful Diversity Initiative?”
  24. U.S. Department of Labor., 2005, “Placement Goals. Code of Federal Regulations Pertaining to Employment Standards Administration, Title 41, Part 60-2 subpart B.”
  25. Vernon-Gerstenfeld Susan, 1985, Personnel, 62, 54
  26. Weber Max, 1978, Economy and Society, 1, 63
  27. Williams Joan, 2000, Unbending Gender: Why Family Work Conflict and What to Do about It?
  28. Winterle Mary J., 1992, Work Force Diversity: Corporate Challenges, Corporate Responses.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Kalev, A., Dobbin, F., & Kelly, E.
Affiliations
  • Tel Aviv University (IL)
  • Harvard University (US)
  • University of Minnesota (US)
Corresponding author
Kalev, Alexandra
ORCID
Venue
American Sociological Review
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2006-08
Volume
71
Issue
4
Pages
589-617
ISSN
  • 0003-1224 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-8271
DOI
10.1177/000312240607100404
OpenAlex
W2143645464
Cited by
2,052
References
155
Citations by year
2026: 142 · 2025: 162 · 2024: 147 · 2023: 125 · 2022: 127 · 2021: 141 · 2020: 125 · 2019: 169 · 2018: 109 · 2017: 96 · 2016: 91 · 2015: 116 · 2014: 93 · 2013: 79 · 2012: 78
FWCI
88.34
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • American Sociological Review (publishedVersion)
  • SSRN Electronic Journal (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender Diversity and Inequality
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Applied Psychology › Career Development and Diversity
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research
Keywords
workplace diversity, diversity training, mentoring, networking, managerial bias, women in management, minority managers, workplace inequality, institutional theory, employment practices

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review