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The business case for diversity
Joe Guzzardi at Vdare put together an interesting assemblage of stuff about “diversity” in business and scholarly efforts to find out whether it does anything for the bottom line. Seemingly it doesn’t — the main study cited concludes that it can’t be shown to hurt or help much, although the finer print refers to problems created by racial and ethnic diversity that require special efforts to overcome. No smoking guns, but lots of interesting detail like the account of problems at Xerox (a company that notoriously discriminates against non-homosexual white men). My own take is that “corporate diversity” is part of a general trend
toward applying totalitarian
tactics — management by terror, disorientation, and visibly absurd
propaganda — to big corporations. It goes along with “vision”
statements, attempts to reinvent corporate culture, retreats aimed at
behavior modification, and evaluation systems that require a certain
percentage of employees to be let go every year. So even though it has
no specific advantages, corporations now feel “diversity” as a good
thing for general social and ideological reasons. A population of
disconnected individuals promotes consumerism, increases the pool of
potential employees, and is easier to reshuffle and remold than a
population with other strong connections in their lives. What’s not to
like?
Comments
Mr. Kalb makes a good point about what is going on in corporate America. Take a look at the large number of amicus briefs filed with the Supreme Court in favor of continuing the Orwellian “affirmative action” programs in place - it reads like a who’s who list of the Fortune 500. About a year ago, Robert Locke came up with a great term to describe today’s corporate elite: Gramscian Bobos. Xerox is a perfect example - one of many. Posted by: Carl on May 28, 2003 8:23 PMThe only advantage of the multiculturalist corporation over the multiculturalist State is that there are many, facing competitive pressures. Corporatists are only marginally preferable to statists. The closeness of conservatives to the corporate world is a dangerous trend. On most burning questions of real importance — abortion, Christianity, property rights, tradition, family — corporations are AWOL. They favor the status quo, which is decay and dissolution. Posted by: Paul Cella on May 28, 2003 10:23 PM |