ABSTRACT
It is startling that within the course of only 10 years the term diversity evolved from relative obscurity to one of the most commonly cited issues facing managers and organizations today (Digh, 1998a; Robinson & Dechant, 1997; Society for Human Resource Management, 1997). Although diversity has always been a part of organizations, the recognition of diversity as an organizational issue became salient when demographers forecasted that White males would, for the first time, become the numerical minority in the workforce. In 1987 the Hudson Institute released a report predicting that women, immigrants, and people of color would constitute 85% of the new entrants into the workforce by the year 2000 (Johnston & Packer, 1987), and that White men would account for less than 40% of the labor force by the year 2010 (Loden & Rosener, 1991). Nearly overnight, books and articles appeared that addressed the challenge of diversity and forecasts for the impending “Workforce 2000” (Cox & Blake, 1991; Fernandez, 1991; Jackson & Associates, 1992; Loden & Rosener, 1991; Morrison, 1992; Thomas, 1990, 1991). Thus, the field of “diversity in organizations” was born, even though social scientists have studied the effects of racial and gender diversity in related contexts for well over 40 years (cf. reviews by Alderfer & Thomas, 1988; Konrad & Gutek, 1987; Triandis, Kurowski, & Gelfand, 1993; Williams & O’Reilly, 1998).
