Frederick R. Lynch investigates the various arguments for diversity

ONE of the great ironies in recent political history is that it was a conservative think tank’s population forecast that inadvertently launched “diversity management,” a seductive, business-friendly version of affirmative action. A typographical error in the executive summary of the Hudson Institute’s 1987 population forecast, Workforce 2000, gave the impression that only 15 per cent of new hires in the 1990s would be white males. Other errors, and distortions of the report’s more subtle emphasis on changing labor demographics, were seized upon as the raison d’être for an army of “diversity consultants,” who proffered the alluring message that employers might achieve a “competitive advantage” by hiring a workforce that ethnically resembles a domestic population increasingly drawn from the Third World. To link “dollars and demographics,” consultants crooned, employers must modify their “white male workplace cultures” in order to compete effectively for women and for minorities no longer content to assimilate.

In addition to capitalizing on changing domestic demographics, savvy consultants dangled the keys to “capitalizing upon cultural differences” of overseas workers and markets.

FL

About the Author

Frederick R. Lynch

Featured Tags

ONE of the great ironies in recent political history is that it was a conservative think tank’s population forecast that inadvertently launched “diversity management,” a seductive, business-friendly version of affirmative action. A typographical error in the executive summary of the Hudson Institute’s 1987 population forecast, Workforce 2000, gave the impression that only 15 per cent of new hires in the 1990s would be white males. Other errors, and distortions of the report’s more subtle emphasis on changing labor demographics, were seized upon as the raison d’être for an army of “diversity consultants,” who proffered the alluring message that employers might achieve a “competitive advantage” by hiring a workforce that ethnically resembles a domestic population increasingly drawn from the Third World. To link “dollars and demographics,” consultants crooned, employers must modify their “white male workplace cultures” in order to compete effectively for women and for minorities no longer content to assimilate.

In addition to capitalizing on changing domestic demographics, savvy consultants dangled the keys to “capitalizing upon cultural differences” of overseas workers and markets.