![]() It is erudite yet accessible."-Sanford M. Dobbin's outstanding book should be read by scholars across the social sciences and by practicing attorneys and managers. Grounded in original evidence, Inventing Equal Opportunity makes the important point that management professionalism-like other institutions of civil society-structures the space between markets and states. "Frank Dobbin offers a fresh interpretation of equal opportunity that emphasizes corporate personnel management rather than law. Thomas, coauthor of Breaking Through: The Making of Minority Executives in Corporate America Challenging many of our basic assumptions about social movements and organizational change, this book is a must-read for sociologists concerned with inequality and those attempting to influence corporate responsibility activities in corporations."-David A. " Inventing Equal Opportunity is the most important work of organizational sociology of the last quarter century. "This is an excellent, smart book attuned to the implications its argument has for our understanding of social movements, racial progress, and federalism." -Jennifer Delton, Journal of American History Inventing Equal Opportunity is likely to become one of the definitive books on the history of equal opportunity law and corporate personnel practice." -Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, American Journal of Sociology For institutionalists and law and society scholars the book is necessary reading. The book is a pleasure to read and a field guide for what historically careful institutional analyses should look like. "Frank Dobbin has written a careful institutional analysis of how human resource professionals invented equal opportunity. "This impressive book makes a convincing case for human resources professionals as key players in the implementation of civil rights laws." -Edward Berkowitz, Journal of Social History Through their policies and programs, these experts heightened expectations for fair treatment and promoted a more sociological understanding of racism and sexism inside organizations." -Christine L. #Equal opportunity professional#"Dobbin's book is an eye-opening account of how a professional group used demands for equal opportunity to expand its professional jurisdiction. Consequent to many strengths, I have no doubt that Inventing Equal Opportunity will find a welcome home on the 'must read' shelf among sociologists and graduate students of inequality, law, organizations, professions, and work." -Vincent J. " Inventing Equal Opportunity provides a much needed corrective to our understanding of the workings of corporate America in the face of external pressures surrounding inequality and law. Overall, Dobbin tells a clear, well-documented, fascinating story about workplace relations." -R.L. "In this superb book, Dobbin explains the process through which white males have now become 'victims' of a system intended to uplift disadvantaged groups at the same time, it reveals the fallacy of judicial neutrality in civil rights cases. ![]() Dobbin makes a powerful argument about the importance of long-overlooked personnel managers in creating the legal environment that governs so much of an American's working life." - Science "Frank Dobbin's impressive Inventing Equal Opportunity documents the crucial role played by the personnel profession in translating equal employment law into practice. Inventing Equal Opportunity reveals how the personnel profession devised - and ultimately transformed - our understanding of discrimination. He examines how corporate personnel formalized hiring and promotion practices in the 1970s to eradicate bias by managers how in the 1980s they answered Ronald Reagan’s threat to end affirmative action by recasting their efforts as diversity-management programs and how the growing presence of women in the newly named human resources profession has contributed to a focus on sexual harassment and work/life issues. Dobbin follows the changes in the law as personnel experts invented one wave after another of equal opportunity programs. These measures built on existing personnel programs, many designed to prevent bias against unionists. ![]() He traces how the first measures were adopted by military contractors worried that the Kennedy administration would cancel their contracts if they didn’t take “affirmative action” to end discrimination. Yet, as Frank Dobbin demonstrates, corporate personnel experts - not Congress or the courts - were the ones who determined what equal opportunity meant in practice, designing changes in how employers hire, promote, and fire workers, and ultimately defining what discrimination is, and is not, in the American imagination.ĭobbin shows how Congress and the courts merely endorsed programs devised by corporate personnel. Equal opportunity in the workplace is thought to be the direct legacy of the civil rights and feminist movements and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. ![]()
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