ABSTRACT
Workforce diversity describes the range of employee characteristics that are increasingly present in the contemporary workforce of the United States and other developed countries. The changes caused by workforce diversification generate changed role expectations for all groups in public agencies: appointed and elected officials, managers and supervisors, employees, and public personnel managers. Equal employment opportunity programs are based on organizational efforts to avoid violating employees' or applicants' legal or constitutional rights. And affirmative programs are based on organizational efforts to achieve proportional representation of selected groups. An organization's decision to use workforce diversity to increase effectiveness causes changes in its human resource management policy and practice. Public policy and administration is a river of theory and practice comprising many currents, some conflicting with each other. Thus, it is to be expected that workforce diversification programs are consistent with some contemporary management trends in that they share common assumptions and objectives.
