ABSTRACT
The challenge of changing times demands creative and fundamentally different approaches. Resistance to change will detract from corporate America’s ability to be “king of the global economic hill.” The 1992 U.S. Department of Labor Report, “Pipelines of Progress,” indicated that the bad news is that “surveys in the corporate world do not point to an optimistic future unless commitments to positive change are sustained and enhanced” (4). Evidently, as this study supports, corporations must seek solutions beyond special training and diversity awareness training and also be willing to actively and consistently undertake certain challenges and make system changes in order to effectively combat the obstacles/inhibitors to blacks and other minority success that ultimately impact bottom line results negatively. Some of these initiatives must center around promotion-related problems at particular levels or segments of the corporate hierarchy, which can eventually have a negative effect on productivity, innovation, turnover, attrition, and absenteeism rates. The initiatives which must take place within the context of a corporation’s vision, mission, and values and must be linked to its business strategy include:
