Katherine C. Naff

Ensuring Employment Equity: Are Federal Diversity Programs Making a Difference?

Abstract In the last two decades, many public sector agencies have instituted a wide array of “managing diversity” programs designed to remove barriers to the full participation of women and people of color. Meanwhile, agencies are also increasingly responding to pressure to develop measures to monitor performance of all of their programs. Yet there have been few efforts in place to measure the effectiveness of diversity management programs. This article argues that such an evaluation is essential, and offers a preliminary governmentwide estimation of the success federal agencies have had in breaking down these barriers. We found, for the most part, that there is little evidence that broad‐based diversity programs, nor any of their programmatic components, have created a more equitable work environment for women or people of color. We then examine the programs at two federal agencies with significant diversity efforts, in depth, and find again that the results have been mixed. While not meant to be the final word, we suggest that these findings can serve as the basis for generating greater discussion and analysis of these important, but under‐evaluated, programs.

Responding to a Wake-up Call: An Examination of Federal Agency Diversity Management Programs

This article reports the results of a survey administered to 160 federal agencies and subagencies to gauge the extent to which they have developed diversity management programs. Many agencies report that they have implemented numerous programmatic elements recommended by the growing body of literature on diversity in the workplace. In contrast, other agencies indicate that they have very limited programs or that they have simply repackaged their traditional equal employment opportunity and affirmative action initiatives. A primary determinant of the level of development of agency or subagency diversity programs is support from the head of each organization.

IDENTITY POLITICS AND LOCAL POLITICAL CULTURE Some Comparative Results from the Social Capital Benchmark Survey

Using the Social Capital Benchmark Survey (SCBS) data sets, the authors conducted a multilevel comparative study of identity politics and political culture in the United States and 30 urban communities. Analysis showed that gender, race, class, and religion predict political ideology, electoral behavior, and political protest in the national sample. Replications in the community samples, however, revealed significant differences in the patterns of relationships among those variables. Some patterns deviated markedly from the national norm, particularly with respect to race as a predictor of political protest. Using an index of new political culture, the authors show that “place matters” as a contextual influence on the strength and direction of relationships between social identity (particularly race and religion) and political outcomes.

Symposium Federal Civil Service Reform: Another Legacy of 9/11?

In this post–September 11, 2001 era, it can be argued that civil service reform has increasingly taken on a sense of urgency. By any measure, the current reforms in process at the federal level are...

The Complexity of Descriptive Representation and Bureaucracy: The Case of South Africa

ABSTRACT This article uses the South African case to look at the concept of descriptive representation—an important element in the theory of representative bureaucracy. Considerable literature has examined the relationship between descriptive representation, or the number of members of an identity group that are present in a public sector organization, and active representation, the extent to which those representatives pursue the interests of those they are presumed to represent. Less studied is the descriptive representation side of the equation. Descriptive representation should not be seen as simply a matter of counting the numbers of members of identity groups in an organization. Rather, one should also ask whether the identity groups that are to be privileged for representation make sense. This article explores the extent to which challenges in identity formation and classification alter passive representation and the potential for active representation. We consider how those targeted for representation in the new democratic South Africa are defined and the tension and issues the definition has caused for the governments stated policy of achieving a representative public service.

Toward the year 2000: Issues and strategies for federal labor-management relations

The 1990s are bringing new challenges to the federal labor-management relations process. Unions and management alike are being forced to confront changes in the demographics of the workforce, fiscal constraints and a conservative political climate. This article reports the results of a survey of federal labor relations professionals. The survey was designed to gauge their perceptions of the strategies and structures of the labor relations program in the 1990s. It revealed marked agreement about the issues that are emerging, and optimism about the programs ability to adapt, but showed some disagreement in strategies needed to meet these challenges.

The Gender Equity Dilemma: The Decade Ahead for Female Representation in the South African Public Service

With the formation of a democratic regime in 1996, the new Republic of South Africa established a number of goals, including the advancement of women in politics, society and the public service. Within the public service, ambitious targets were set for the representation of women in management and intensive efforts undertaken to achieve them. Women have made great strides, but have consistently failed to reach those goals. This paper utilizes the findings of prior research on impediments to the advancement of women in organizations (often called the glass ceiling) to suggest a framework for analysis. Then, data obtained from South Africa’s nationwide employment database provide the basis for examining how the structure and dynamics of the public service delay progress. It describes how such factors as concentration in certain departments and grade levels, methods of accession and turnover serve as obstacles, in some expected and unexpected ways. The markov chain method of workforce forecasting is employed to estimate women’s progress through the year 2022, and finds that current targets will remain elusive. It concludes by suggesting that a fruitful area for further research on women’s advancement, in South Africa and elsewhere, would be these kinds of analyses of how organizations’ internal structures and dynamics and interaction among them.

Book Review: Diversity and Public Administration: Theory, Issues, and Perspectives

The publication of the Hudson Institute’s Workforce 2000 in 1987 (Johnston & Packer, 1987) sent shock waves through the human resource management community. The book reported that women, people of color, and older workers were increasing their share of the workforce. It warned that unless employers changed workforce policies originally designed for young White males, productivity would suffer. As a result, a multimillion dollar industry consisting of consultants, books, and other training materials developed, promising to reform workforce policies and procedures to better accommodate the projected diversity. As Mitchell F. Rice points out in Diversity and Public Administration, most of these materials were developed by and for private sector organizations. This, then, is a void that Rice’s book seeks to fill—diversity in employment from the perspective of public sector agencies. The book also contributes to filling a second void. Most of the few books that address diversity in the public sector are focused on employment, and yet the increasingly diverse population has implications in other areas as well, including service delivery and education. In 12 chapters authored by 17 scholars, the book addresses a variety of topics. It begins, quite logically, with a chapter authored by Rice and Harvey L. White that sets the stage by highlighting the growing diversity in the American population. Although it may have been better to base this discussion on more recent demographic projections, such as the Hudson Institute’s 1997 sequel to Workforce 2000, Workforce 2020 (Judy & D’Amico, 1997), the message is the same: The demographics of the American workforce are shifting and will continue to do so. Workforce 2020 advises that whereas women held less than one third of American jobs in 1950, they soon will hold as large a share of jobs as men. The proportion of the workforce that is White, non-Hispanic is projected to decrease from 76% in 1995 to 68% in 2020. Although the share of jobs held by African Americans is expected to remain at about 11%, the proportion of jobs held by Hispanic and Asian non-Hispanics is projected to grow from 9% to 14% and from 4% to 6%, respectively.