ABSTRACT
The idea for writing the first edition of this book arose from one author’s experiences in
planning and teaching a final year undergraduate module entitled ‘Managing Diversity’
in the late 1990s. That module’s aim was to provide the theoretical and conceptual underpinning necessary to understand the changing British and European contexts of
workforce diversity and the changing equality and diversity policies and practices of
government, organisations, line-managers and human resource practitioners. Difficul-
ties were found in identifying a suitable textbook to support the programme of teaching
and learning, this despite research-based literature contained in both texts and journals
and despite a range of textbooks and management guides largely originating from the
US. One problem was that the management guides generally did not provide the
theoretical and conceptual substance, whilst US textbooks did not provide a relevant contextual backdrop for a discussion of the UK and European approaches. Following
in-depth student evaluation of the module, involving questionnaires and focus groups,
the conclusion arrived at was that it was timely to write a text largely aimed at the UK
market that would situate diversity and equality debates within the context of the British
and European labour markets. This book explores employment patterns and outcomes
of diverse social groups and the policies and practices of key actors in the labour market.
It is now widely accepted that there are six main equality and diversity strands: gender,
race/ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, age and religion. At the time of writing the first and second editions, we argued that five social groups, women, black and minority
ethnic people, older people, disabled people and lesbians and gay men, were widely
recognized as experiencing inequalities, discrimination and disadvantage in employ-
ment. We therefore focused our analysis on these five groups. However, since then
religion has increasingly been seen as a source of discrimination and disadvantage that
can work independently of race/ethnicity. Whilst in this third edition we are unable to
provide separate and detailed analysis of religion, it is dealt with where religion intersects with other sources of discrimination. In the fourth edition, due to be published in
2012, we plan to give more comprehensive coverage to religion. This third edition
provides updated information on the labour market and legal contexts of diversity and
explores some of the new developments in the theory and practice of equality and
diversity policy.
