Diversity programs: attitude and realities in the contemporary corporate environment

This discussion examines attitudes toward, and the focus of, contemporary corporate diversity programs. It considers the observations of six diversity personnel focus groups, interviews conducted with 26 middle managers and eight executive management‐level personnel, observations from interviews with corporate diversity directors and observations from interviews with human resource managers and corporate communication managers who carry the responsibility for monitoring diversity programs. In the corporate environment participants rarely place a theoretic frame on diversity issues. “Dimensions of difference” were employed as a theoretic frame for this action research. Major issues to emerge were the lack of dialogue regarding diversity, the nature of diversity training and performance evaluation, the complexity of diversity issues, the managers’ role and the move to integration and learning as the perspective to bring about effectiveness in corporate diversity programming.