Overview

In 1995, Meg A. Bond began working as a researcher, consultant, and trainer at ""ChemPro""-a New England manufacturing firm that produces specialized chemicals. Brought on board to guide ChemPro's efforts to create an equitable, efficient, and diverse workplace, for seven years Bond enjoyed open access to the organization's change process and to all the individuals involved. Using ecological theory as her conceptual framework, Bond delineates the stages of this process as it unfolded, drawing out lessons for workers, managers, and consultants from the nitty-gritty dynamics that emerged as the organization underwent change. Bond addresses such issues as privilege, multiple realities, intent versus impact, interdependence, and reactions-both positive and negative-to diversity interventions. Emphasizing messy dilemmas as well as successful strategies, she offers an energetic and honest appraisal of a long-term diversity effort, with lessons that apply to other institutions and organizations. Bond's is a unique multiyear site-specific study addressing multiple dimensions of diversity. Her""hands-on"" experience, unusual for a scholar, provides a more complete and nuanced view of what is really required to support a diverse workplace. In a society of growing heterogeneity, this is a central challenge that is increasingly affecting most workplaces.

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9781584656524

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Reviews

ASQ readers will benefit from analyzing the rich description of this socio-anthropological case study to derive jumping-off points for further theory development as well as fodder for building related research programs. Practitioners will delight in the detailed firsthand accounts of an unexpectedly successful collaboration between consultants and managers. And anyone interested in the cause of creating an inclusive workplace for all individuals will appreciate this well-written, highly insightful narrative of a remarkable effort to change and improve a single organization in the face of some particularly difficult, but perhaps not uncommon, challenges. --Administrative Science Quarterly

Author Information

MEG A. BOND is Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Center for Women and Work at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. She is also a Resident Scholar at the Brandeis University Women's Studies Research Center.

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