I attended a terrific lecture last night by Harvard sociologist Frank Dobbin, as part of Baruch College’s Ackerman Lecture Series on Equality and Justice in America. If Dobbin’s research isn’t familiar to you, here’s the breakdown, based upon his work with several decades of federal employment statistics: many of the most cherished organizational diversity-management programs happen to be the worst in advancing employee diversity and promotions, while some of those least used happen to be the very best. Dobbin’s research centers upon the idea that three practices, in particular, can most contribute to creating the conditions for greater equality in the workplace: mentorship programs, the existence of a diversity manager within an organization, and a diversity task force in each institution made up of managers and others committed to forwarding such ideals.

Dobbins was careful to not extrapolate too far beyond his data, but called for citizens and the government to propagate these best practices in every public and private institution. On the other side, the millions of dollars and hours that go into many organizations’ diversity
programs should be cut in favor of these more effective methods—particularly in climates where, as also appears to be demonstrated, employees and top managers have even grown more hostile to such causes as a result of poorly conceived diversity training efforts. Further information on some of these studies are encapsulated in Time and even Contexts articles on Dobbin’s website: http://scholar.harvard.edu/dobbin/biocv