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The Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986, requires all private sector employers in Australia with more than 100 employees to report annually on programmes they have developed to improve women′s employment opportunities. A criterion sampling approach was used to identify organizations whose public reports to the Affirmative Action Agency in 1992, contained at least some evidence of affirmative action programme development. There were 288 organizations identified in this way. The employment profiles of these 288 organizations for the period 1991‐1993 are compared with a random sample of another 288 organizations reporting to the agency over the same period. There are no clear conclusions which can be drawn from the employment profiles. What does emerge from the analysis is that simple quantitative measures of the effects of affirmative action are clearly inadequate to capture women′s employment experiences.

Obviously affirmative action has had a presence in presidential politics since the Kennedy Administration; however, the focus of this paper is not to chronicle the treatment of affirmative action policy in each presidency since the 1960s, but rather to take a different look at affirmative action from the context of contemporary times during the Obama Administration, with both Clinton and Bush Administrations as reference points.

In addition to noting how the Clinton and Bush Administrations responded to critics of the 50 +  year old policy framework of acting affirmatively, this paper explores how the Obama Administration has advanced access by supporting race-conscious admissions and principles of the diversity rationale.

This paper also argues that the Obama Administration has acted affirmatively by establishing and/or promoting economic policies that seek to address the legacy of poverty, thereby expanding access further.

Direct democracy by citizen initiatives is often heralded as the avenue for the true will of the people to be heard. While scholars have debated whether this leads to a form of Madison's “tyranny of the majority,” the debate over the concrete impact of such initiatives on racially marginalized groups remains unsettled. We examine a different question about racially marginalized groups' interests in this process: the symbolic assertion of white supremacy expressed through this mechanism of majority will. We develop the concept of “racial spectacles” to describe the narrative vehicles that serve to symbolically reassert and reinforce real existing racial hierarchies and inequalities. We explore the creation of these spectacles through the initiative process because it is a state-sanctioned vehicle that enables white dominance. Paradoxically, these campaigns that purport to be colorblind depend on the enactment of these racial spectacles. Through an analysis of five statewide anti-affirmative action initiative campaigns from 1996 to 2008, we explore both macro and micro political dynamics: public displays of these campaigns as well as individual, private agency expressed in the public and private act of voting; court decisions in initiative litigation as well as individual and interest group participation in these cases. Ultimately, we argue that this form of racial spectacle further inculcates the public in the postracial ideology of colorblindness.

Affirmative action and diversity management are complementary efforts to achieve an inclusive workforce. Research on attitudes toward affirmative action can therefore contribute to an understanding of reactions to diversity programs. Using data from two studies, we assess the extent to which the strength of the affirmative action plan (AAP) influences the relationship between attitudes and individual difference predictors. The relation of attitudes with the respondents’ race and perceived self-interest increased monotonically with AAP strength, whereas measures of racial prejudice and political orientation best predicted attitudes toward AAPs of intermediate strength. We explore the implications of these findings for the theory and practice of diversity management.

Discusses principles of equality and justice in order to justify affirmative action and clarify its need. Posits that in both the USA and South Africa, issues of segregation and discrimination are not new and both countries have had the opportunity to address their past policies by way of affirmative action programmes. Looks at what determined the denouncement of the affirmative action in the USA and why the answer to this question may have a great impact on South Africa’s attempt to improve its own affirmative action programmes. Concludes that, although 30 years of affirmative action was deemed unconstitutional, how can South Africa derive and make use of the knowledge gained to help in stopping reverse discrimination.

The purpose of this paper is to show how various organizational justifications for hiring decisions influence the beneficiary's perceptions of fairness. Specifically, the paper investigates the relative impacts of no justification, affirmative action justification and justifications based on attempts to improve organizational creativity.

Participants were asked to read several vignettes in which the justification for the hiring decisions was manipulated. Fairness perceptions were then assessed for each scenario. Paired‐sample t tests were used to test hypotheses.

The paper finds that perceptions of both procedural and distributive justice appeared to follow a common theme across Hispanic and African American subgroups where the hiring decision was perceived to be fairer when no justification was provided. Hiring decisions based on affirmative action and diversity programs designed to promote creativity were perceived as less fair by both African Americans and Hispanics.

The study used a sample of minority students, thereby limiting the generalizability of these findings.

The current study has practical implications in that it may help both academicians and practitioners better understand what applicants perceive regarding the fairness of affirmative action and diversity programs.

Past research has investigated the preferential selection of women and minorities, however, there has been little systematic inquiry into the possible justifications that might reduce the negative reactions of beneficiaries.

The Australian government's commitment to equal employment opportunity has resulted in the enactment of anti‐discrimination and affirmative action legislation at both the federal and state level and the development of a number of labour market, training and social policies specifically designed to remove impediments to women's employment. The Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1986 is pivotal to the removal of discrimination in organisations, but its effectiveness has been hindered by the restructuring of organisations on a divisional basis, a lack of understanding of the nature of equal employment opportunity (eeo) and the role of affirmative action programmes among some employers and employees, and the choices women make about their employment and training. A number of innovative policies have been developed by large organisations to deal with these barriers to the effectiveness of affirmative action programmes and the creation of eeo and they provide useful models for other organisations.

Although affirmative action is often referred to as though it was an homogeneous entity, the reality is that affirmative action policies can take many different forms. To date, the variety of affirmative action policies that have been implemented in Australia has not been well‐documented. In this paper, a framework is developed to describe the variety of affirmative action policies being implemented in Australia in the 1990s. The most frequently reported policies by Australian organisations concern reviewing employment policies for discriminatory practices. The next most commonly reported policies relate to companies’ efforts to assist employees to balance the competing roles of work and family. Policies that seek to challenge traditional patterns of employment, and policies that seek to “fix” women are less commonly reported by organisations. The breaking down of affirmative action into various types of policies provides scope for more fully exploring the question of the effectiveness of affirmative action policies.

This paper explores the impact of affirmative action on the culture of small business enterprises in South Africa. The functions of organizational culture are explored and utilized to reach a deeper understanding of the desired impact of affirmative action. Managers are identified as holding key roles as change agents. Recommendations include managing change from a culture perspective directed at creating participative management processes and shifting the enterprise’s essential values.

This article discusses the costs and benefits of implementing affirmative action programs in higher education. Based on a national survey of institutions of higher education, the author addresses the following questions: What factors impede the ability of the affirmative action officer to achieve program results? What is the effect of staff size, budget, and race on perceived implementation barriers? This study finds that increased impediments to affirmative action program efficacy are greatly affected by program resources and race.