“This book has the potential to change CEO mindsets, human resource practices, manager behavior, and employee well-being—if only enough people grab it and heed its powerful messages.” —Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of Think Outside the Building“Dobbin and Kalev have spent their careers studying why diversity initiatives fail and what it takes to fix them. Their data-driven book doesn’t just spotlight the problems—it’s packed with solutions.” —Adam Grant“Essential re...

Equal opportunity in the workplace is thought to be the direct legacy of the civil rights and feminist movements and the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet, as Frank Dobbin demonstrates, corporate personnel experts--not Congress or the courts--were the ones who determined what equal opportunity meant in practice, designing changes in how employers hire, promote, and fire workers, and ultimately defining what discrimination is, and is not, in the American imagination.Dobbin show...

Every year America becomes more diverse, but change in the makeup of the management ranks has stalled. The problem has become an urgent matter of national debate. How do we fix it? Arguing that it's time to focus on changing systems rather than individuals, two of the world's leading experts on workplace diversity show us a better way in the first comprehensive, data-driven analysis of what succeeds and what fails. The surprising results will change how America works.Frank Dobbin a...

Economic sociology is a rapidly expanding field, applying sociology's core insight--that individuals behave according to scripts that are tied to social roles--to economic behavior. It places homo economicus (that tried-and-true fictive actor who is completely rational, acts only out of self-interest, and has perfect information) in context. In this way, it places a construct into a framework that more closely approximates the world in which we live. But, as an academic field, eco...