From The Human Resource Executive Online:
"to date, there has been no social science or evidence to prove that diverse organizations are actually better performing, more creative and more productive.Should that information become available, he [Lynch] says, "diversity and HR professionals will have a much easier time convincing CEOs" -- and courts of law -- "that diversity is a viable business imperative and not just a case of representation and quotas," the latter of which would make a company ripe for reverse-discrimination charges.
Lynch, author of The Diversity Machine: The Drive to Change the "White Male Workplace" and Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action, says he has seen an increase in successful white-male reverse-discrimination suits in the United States, though they are still rare."
Hear that Scripps College? Productivity, creativity and performance of an entity are not affected by the racial breakup of their employees. What a shocker. Who would have thought that individual talents and competence levels are more important than race or gender?
Of course, we can be sure that diversity does not improve company performance. If this assumption was true, there would be an in-built economic incentive to have a diverse workforce.
Subscribe in a reader
10 comments:
Finally. Somebody's standing up for the little guy and saying, "Hey America. I think we're ready for white men to be in charge."
No one's standing up for anyone. This is academia, not a turf war. Lynch makes no proclamation or call for revolution in his book. As far as I know, he doesn't consider race as a component of merit.
Aditya, I'd be happy with a government that laid the smack down on corporations drunk on their own diversity ga-ga pieties. Corporate culture, not just the government, is part of the problem.
And let's face it, "diversity" has always been a sham rationale to promote the races and classes we like best.
"an increase in successful white-male reverse-discrimination suits in the United States, though they are still rare."
Oops. I wasn't aware that all of these litigants had defended themselves. Coincidence? Or are white men just natural lawyers?
And Dan, I happen to like Pacific Islanders the best, and upper-middle class. But we wouldn't want either of those groups running a company, would we?
High fives all around!
Dan,
I wouldn't want to give government the power to fix silly corporate culture. Today they fix it by ending silly diversity shams, tomorrow they mandate that every secretary be asian, lesbian and progressive.
But yes, diversity is a sham rationale to pick and choose the preferred races.
I don't think corporate culture is the problem here. Its the legal framework that allows nutty radicals to sue private entities for the way in which they conduct their business. The culture maybe a consequence of trying to prevent lawsuits.
Aditya,
Obviously an overbearing governmental intrusion is dangerous. But I think you would agree that government can (and should) outlaw racial discrimination, even when you invent pretty names for it.
Dan
Even if Prof. Lynch convinces affirmative action proponents that his thesis is true, I do not think it will have any effect on their support for affirmative action.
Let's face it, if the main factor driving affirmative action proponents were their belief that it would quantifiably benefit the organizations which adopt it, it would not be as big a deal as it is. To convince anyone to abandon affirmative action based on its effects on organizations, it would require the claim that affirmative action positively harms the performance of organizations.
I agree with Helen; the goal isn't improved company performance, its diversity qua diversity.
Helen, the goal was never to improve corporate efficiency. But in a legal dispute, the company can justify not hiring/firing an individual because of performance, productivity, creativity etc.
If one can establish a link between diversity and performance indicators, the corporations are left with practically no argument in their defense.
Even though a private entity has no legal obligation to solve any perceptions of social injustice in the world, a logically incoherent argument would not hold.
As long as diversity has no relation to performance indicators, corporations have a legitimate defense in a legal dispute.
Thanks Aditya, I get why he made the argument now.
In that case, pessimistic as I may be about employment law, I still think a court couldn't get away with saying "Well, someone established a link between diversity and performance so you can't fire this INDIVIDUAL minority employee". Individual incompetence, I believe, would always be a legitimate defense, even if the employee belongs to a group which is considered to be desirable as a whole (to take a non-racial example, Ivy League graduates). Such a generality as the opposite of Prof. Lynch's thesis should (and I hope would) have no effect on specific cases.
My boyfriend is always telling me that I have far too much faith in the judicial system, though, so you may disagree.
Post a Comment