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Many minority members fail to understand that their career mobility can be affected by their colleagues’ feelings of familiarity or closeness with them. Even those who do understand this can find building workplace relationships across racial boundaries difficult. Being one’s true self, disclosing elements of one’s personal life, and forming social connections are harder when attempted across a demographic boundary such as racial background. Helping workplace relationships flourish among people of differing races may require special effort. The authors suggest several strategies that organizations can use to make employees from varied demographic groups feel comfortable engaging with one another: (1) Recognize the role that structure—such as formal icebreaker games or having a leader introduce everyone at a gathering— can play in easing the discomfort of free-form socializing. (2) Adopt a learning orientation by asking open and curious questions that demonstrate that being different makes someone more valuable. (3) Consider creating a buddy system of informal mentorship, in which moreexperienced employees help facilitate social relationships for new hires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how chief executive officer (CEO) Howard Schultz is transforming the Starbucks Corp. coffee company, focusing on racism in America, the minority baristas who work at Starbucks Corp., and police shootings in places such as New York, New York, Oakland, California, and Ferguson, Missouri. Schultz's views about race relations, student debt, and veterans' rights in the U.S. are mentioned. The future of America's economy is examined, along with training programs for workers.

This section lists the top 50 companies in the U.S. that offer employment opportunities for minorities at every level as of July 9, 2001.

Presents a list of 50 privately-held United States companies deemed by 'Fortune' magazine to promote diversity in their minority employment practices. Criteria for evaluation, including minorities as a percentage of new hires and minorities in leadership positions; Details of the diversity of Advantica, Levi Strauss & Co., Fannie Mae, and others. INSETS: Levi's mends the social fabric, by Natasha Tarpley;Hyatt gets cooking in high school, by Natasha Tarpley;US West has the tools, by Feliciano Garcia;Montoya and his shadows, by Feliciano Garcia

Introduces a series of articles on race relations in the United States workplace. Statistics regarding job satisfaction among minority executive employees; Competitive advantages represented by a diverse work force; Incidence of discrimination against minority executives; Importance of promoting a message of minority success in corporate culture; Corporations which promote multiculturalism, including Shoney's and others.

Focuses on efforts of television networks in the U.S. for increasing minority representation in their industry. Urge made by the networks to establish minority recruitment programs, add minority writing slots to successful shows, and do more business with minority suppliers; Discussion on root cause of segregated viewing of television; Changes that have taken place in the television industry through the advent of cable and television advertising.

Lists the 50 United States companies identified by `Fortune' in 1999 as providing the best opportunities for Black, Hispanic and Asian employees. Criteria for selection; Companies that were surveyed; Survey categories; Role of the Council on Economic Priorities in assessment of information. INSETS: The Trickle-Up Effect;Father Figure at the Front Door;Lone Knights;Chasing A Global Edge

Introduces the 1999 `Fortune' ranking of the 50 Best Companies for Asians, Blacks and Hispanics in the United States. Comparison of the group's performance to that of the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index over five years; Diversity as a competitive advantage; Impact of a Texaco discrimination suit on corporate attention to diversity.

The storm that has been gathering over affirmative action for the past few years has burst. Two conservative California professors are leading a drive to place an initiative on the state ballot in 1996 that will ask Californians to vote affirmative action up or down. Affirmative action required institutions to develop plans enabling them to go beyond business as usual and search for qualified people in places where they did not ordinarily conduct their searches or their business. Affirmative action programs generally require some proof that there has been a good-faith effort to follow the plan and numerical guidelines against which to judge the sincerity and the success of the effort.

Focuses on the issues presided by the U.S. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller in two meetings of presidential commission. Investigation of allegations of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) misdoing; Emphasis on the need of minority employment; Hope of Rockefeller to make a contribution in presidential policy processes; Increase in the determination of Rockefeller to handle the problems in the country.

Details the top 50 United States companies who most successfully incorporate diversity in management and in the workplace. Participation of the Council on Economic Priorities in design of the survey; Details; Identification of the companies, including Pacific Enterprises, Advantica, BankAmerica, Fannie Mae, Marriott International, Applied Materials, Edison International, Computer Associates, Ryder System, Pitney Bowes, and others.

Affirmative action is based on a set of 30-year-old premises that badly need revising. White males are no longer dominant at every level of the corporation (statistically, they are merely the largest of many minorities), while decades of attack have noticeably weakened racial and gender prejudices. At the intake level, affirmative action quite effectively sets the stage for a workplace that is gender-, culture-, and color-blind. But minorities and women tend to stagnate, plateau, or quit when they fail to move up the corporate ladder, and everyone's dashed hopes lead to corporate frustration and a period of embarrassed silence, usually followed by a crisis--and more recruitment. Some companies have repeated this cycle three or four times. The problem is that our traditional image of assimilating differences--the American melting pot--is no longer valid. It's a seller's market for skills, and the people business has to attract are refusing to be melted down. So companies are faced with the task of managing unassimilated diversity and getting from it the same commitment, quality, and profit they once got from a homogeneous work force. To reach this goal, we need to work not merely toward culture- and color- blindness but also toward an openly multicultural workplace that taps the full potential of every employee without artificial programs, standards, or barriers. The author gives his own ten guidelines for learning to manage diversity by learning to understand and modify your company's culture, vision, assumptions, models, and systems. INSETS: Out of the Numbers Game and into Decision Making;"It Simply Makes Good Business Sense.";Turning Social Pressures into Competitive Advantage;Discovering Complexity and Value in P&G's Diversity [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The federal government has, since the mid-1960s, encouraged racial minorities to develop businesses. Though thousands of minority businesses have started up over the past decade and a half, their economic impact has been relatively small. The slow growth of the minority business sector has led federal policymakers lo take a new approach. Now they want to direct government and private financing and other efforts to those businesses that have the greatest chance of growing into substantial companies. They also want to encourage increased government and corporate purchasing from minority businesses. Behind the emerging new policy is a philosophy that minority entrepreneurs and businesses should be judged more than they have been in the past by established business criteria so as to develop businesses that are competitive and a significant part of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite what many business leaders say and think, practically no company has yet achieved full equality in employment for women and minorities, as required by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Moreover, it is doubtful that many government officials or business executives fully understand the real dynamics of the problem. The main reason, say the authors of this article, is that both business and government executives are approaching the problem in the wrong way. Instead of analyzing past and planned rates of hiring and promoting women and minority-group males as a basis for setting management goals, they are looking at the "balance sheet" of cumulative hiring and promotion performance. What is needed is a model that shows the movement, or "flow," of women and minority-group men through each management level. Such a model, which may suggest quite different answers from those provided by conventional methods of analysis, has now been tested in industry and can be adapted for use by all companies, universities, and other organizations making Affirmative Action commitments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the effect of the current recession in reversing progress made in recent years toward equal opportunity for women and minority workers. At the heart of the problem is the principle of seniority as the basis for layoff, which means that the last hired are the first fired. The authors suggest that the concept of inverse seniority is one way to provide more equitable treatment for all. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A company reveals its true character in its "face." Much talk of equal employment opportunity cannot hide the overt or unconscious prejudice a business actually holds against women and minorities. To female and minority candidates for employment, a company's subtle prejudicial jargon and impossibly demanding or inflexible job specifications are signs of discrimination. In this article, the author gives the reader a firsthand glimpse of the gallery of faces various companies present in attempting to bring themselves into compliance with the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 (EEO) or in attempting to avoid doing so. The picture today is dismal, she notes, but amid the gloom she sees a beam of light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The implications of recent developments in equal opportunity legislation suggest the wisdom of top management's assessing its company compliance position and developing a positive, voluntary affirmative action program. Accentuating the need for positive action against the risk of prolonged and serious litigation or crippling financial judgments is the now completed transfer to the EEOC of the power to bring its own ‘pattern and practice’ suits. Thus, says the author, ‘systematic litigation against major, visible corporations can be anticipated.’ But management does not have to wait for the impetus of litigation before developing a sensible affirmative action program that will provide excellent protection. In this article, the author sets out the essential elements of such a program, discusses the problems that the voluntary plan may raise, and offers three approaches which may be regarded as starting points for an effective EEO stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asserts that the dispute over affirmative action is about whether America is a nation organized around the principle of individual achievement or group entitlement. How the ability of American schools and companies to judge people according to their merits, rather than their skin color, is at stake; Companies' dilemma; Why some CEOs are nervous about preferential policies; Why companies that do not modify their hiring and promotion standards to enroll minorities are vulnerable.

This article reports on the movement among African-Americans to confront businesses to demand for more jobs and better jobs. The movement is compared to the U.S. worker's drive to unionize at the turn of the 20th century. It notes that these new-found cohesiveness and determination among African-Americans are attributed to the emergence of a group of dynamic and articulate leaders. African-Americans are pressing their case to the unions and to the employers alike.

The article reports on the growing number of African Americans or members of other minority groups in the business of broadcasting in the U.S. It cites a large number of radio stations owned by the minorities, who have also widened the role they played in employment and programming. The controversy over when minority businessmen should ask for financial support whey they seek to get into broadcasting is discussed.

"In the decades ahead any organization which ignores or underestimates the potential of women--or overlooks any source of talent for that matter--will be making a fatal mistake." So said the chief executive of one of the largest U.S. corporations recently. Discrimination against racial minorities has held the attention of federal civil rights enforcement officials in recent years, but now they are turning the spotlight on the employment situation of another "minority" (51% of the population). This has become particularly important for employers since the issuance a year ago of an order requiring government contractors to initiate affirmative action programs, with goals and timetables, to end sex discrimination. But as the quotation above implies, business has a more important reason than fear of penalties for treating seriously the issue of equal rights for women. In this article a woman who has helped launch affirmative action programs in several large companies shows the steps which organizations must take to foster equal treatment of the sexes. These steps include not only goal setting, job restructuring, and training and development of female employees, but also elimination of discriminatory behavior on the part of managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Theodore V. Purcell's "Case of the Borderline Black" (November-December 1971), David Kimball, manager of a corporate engineering department, was faced with a directive to cut his staff. One of the two logical choices for dismissal was Thomas Rawlins, a black engineer with a mediocre record. The case discussion of what to do, and five commentators' analyses of the issue, stirred a number of provocative letters from HBR readers, many of which are excerpted here. At the end of this article, Farther Purcell puts in a last word. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

That the methods of the past are not enough is clear; increasing unrest in the urban ghettos is merely the most dramatic indication of this. That more aggressive action is needed is also clear. "The trouble," says this author, "is that business often does not know how to tackle such unfamiliar and complex problems." He proceeds to tell how the more forward-looking and responsible companies are tackling what is perhaps the most basic problem, unequal employment opportunity. He indicates that the gamut of activity, from setting policy at the top to hiring and training and even to separation, is amenable to a systems approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the problems of equal job opportunity in the United States. The article discusses the credibility gap, which creates an obstacle to the successful implementation of the equal employment opportunity policy in white-collar jobs. The author provides some suggestions for companies who are seeking to close that credibility gap. The approach to solving the problem of white-collar equal employment opportunity offers the advantage of establishing immediate credibility and the longer-term benefit of motivating successive generations of minority group members to consider business as a career alternative.

Negro job applicants generally score lower than whites in tests, a fact that often frustrates attempts by businesses to abide by their pledges as equal opportunity employers and at the same time maintain skilled work forces. The author examines the problem and concludes that an employer's best remedy lies in a revaluation of his entire recruiting program. It is important that executives outside the personnel departments understand the role of tests and other selection techniques, because they are called on to make policy decisions regarding their use. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article highlights events in the past that offer insights into the present and future of the film-television industry in the U.S. They include the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) advocacy for equal employment for minorities in the film-television industry, the Screen Actors Guild's (SAG) study of pay disparity in 1987, and the theater-television rivalry in 1957.

Focuses on the adoption of affirmative action programs in all sectors across the U.S. Position of the Supreme Court on the issue of discrimination and affirmative action; Local governments that fought to save their set-aside programs after the Court struck down the program of Richmond, Virginia; Legal requisites of affirmative action programs; Details of the affirmative action of the American Bar Association; Internal programs developed and implemented by companies; Racial sensitivity training programs for white male employees; Affirmative action in schools and universities.