ABSTRACT
This is the fourth edition of The Dynamics of Managing Diversity, first published in 2000. The idea for writing the first edition of this book arose from one author’s experiences of 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, organizations and human resource practitioners. Although there was a growing research-based literature contained in books and journals, students seemed to find this difficult to understand with no prior knowledge of the field. Most of the academic textbooks published in the 1990s were written by US authors and based on the North American experience of workforce diversity. These did not provide a wholly relevant backdrop for a discussion of the UK and European labour market context and approaches to policy making on diversity. Following in-depth student evaluation of the module, involving questionnaires and focus groups, the conclusion was that it was timely to write a text largely aimed at the UK student market that would situate diversity and equality debates within the context of the British and European labour markets.
