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.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. This study shows that the organization of work, particularly the structure of jobs, can sustain or erode gender and racial disadvantage. Restructuring work around team work and weaker job boundaries can improve women's and minorities' visibility and reduce stereotyping and thus should reduce their career disadvantage. Proponents of bureaucratic formalization argue, in contrast, that relaxing formal job definitions and emphasizing social relations at work will deepen ascriptive disadvantage. The reorganization of work in corporate America over the last two decades provides a test case. Using unique data on the life histories of more than 800 organizations, the author examines whether alleviating job segregation leads to better career outcomes for women and minorities. This study finds that when employers adopt popular team and training programs that increase cross-functional collaboration, ascriptive inequality declines. Similar programs that do not transcend job boundaries do not lead to such increases. The results point to different effects at the intersection of gender and race.

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Organization scholars since Max Weber have argued that formal personnel systems can prevent discrimination. We draw on sociological and psychological literatures to develop a theory of the varied effects of bureaucratic reforms on managerial motivation. Drawing on selfperception and cognitive-dissonance theories, we contend that initiatives that engage managers in promoting diversity-special recruitment and training programs-will increase diversity. Drawing on job-autonomy and self-determination theories, we contend that initiatives that limit managerial discretion in hiring and promotion-job tests, performance evaluations, and grievance procedures-will elicit resistance and produce adverse effects. Drawing on transparency and accountability theories, we contend that bureaucratic reforms that increase transparency for job-seekers and hiring managers-job postings and job ladders-will have positive effects. Finally, drawing on accountability theory, we contend that monitoring by diversity managers and federal regulators will improve the effects of bureaucratic reforms. We examine the effects of personnel innovations on managerial diversity in 816 U.S. workplaces over 30 years. Our findings help explain the nation's slow progress in reducing job segregation and inequality. Some popular bureaucratic reforms thought to quell discrimination instead activate it. Some of the most effective reforms remain rare.