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More than six years have elapsed since the much‐heralded Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 (hereafter also referred to as the “Act”) came into force. The Act had been prompted by concern at the lack of progress made in the sphere of racial equality despite the existence of the 1976 Race Relations Act. There were accusations that the 1976 Act was outdated and lacked the political teeth to be effective. The new Act imposed for the first time specific requirements on public sector institutions to be more proactive in promoting race equality. The duties would apply to public bodies that were previously exempt such as the Police and the National Health Service. This paper aims to focus on Scottish local councils and to examine the progress made by these public sector organisations in the field of race equality since the new Act came into force.

The researchers carried out a postal survey of Scotland's 32 local authorities in order to assess the progress made in the area of race equality. Questions focused on examining the scale of progress in relation to both employment and service delivery.

The results revealed a mixed picture. On the positive side, most councils had initiated race awareness training programmes. The majority had also incorporated aspects of race equality into their equal opportunities policies and most had instituted measures to engage with ethnic minority communities. However, there are still areas where performance is unsatisfactory, including inadequacies in the ethnic monitoring of staff, failure to reflect the size of the ethnic minority community in the workforce, and the absence of a clear and distinctive policy on racial harassment in the workplace.

This research will be of great value to anyone who is interested in assessing whether the legislative duties imposed by the Act have been satisfied by Scotland's local authorities. It is the first study of its kind in Scotland and is likely to appeal to both practitioners in the public sector and to academics.

Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy is a biography incorporating history and social justice. This lesson involves students in grades 5-8 exploring social justice issues related to economic equality, racial equality, gender equality, health equality, peace, and justice. Students trace Jane Addams’s public service activities, in these areas of social justice, while simultaneously examining significant, external historical events and people, between 1860 and 1939, through the lens of Addams’s life. Students create a timeline and engage in ongoing discussions related to Addams’s involvement in these historical events and her connections to people, of this period, who, like Addams, were advocates for social change (e.g. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. Du Bois, Eleanor Roosevelt). Example activities and scoring rubrics are included in the appendix section. Inspired by descriptions of Jane Addams’s extraordinary life, an extension activity introduces students to social justice issues, within their own community, and provides steps to initiate community involvement.

The UK Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 places a statutory duty on all public authorities to promote race equality throughout all their functions. The purpose of this paper is to discuss steps being taken by social landlords in Wales and contractors and consultants to promote race equality within the construction procurement process.

The principle methods of data collection were focus groups with social landlords and postal questionnaires and semi structured telephone interviews with construction contractors and consultants.

Little action is being taken by social landlords in Wales to promote race equality within the construction procurement process. Furthermore, construction contractors and consultants that undertake work on behalf of social landlords are doing little to ensure race equality within their own organisations.

A relatively small sample of construction contractors and consultants took part in the research.

In order to meet their obligations under current legislation social landlords need to ensure that they promote race equality within the procurement process. Construction companies including maintenance and minor works contractors that aspire to be engaged by social landlords will need to demonstrate that they are committed to race equality and its implementation and have the appropriate policies and procedures in place to ensure this.

This research is the first to evaluate the procurement practices of social landlords in Wales and how these practices may impact on race equality within the procurement process. The research also examined the steps being taken to promote equality by construction contractors and consultants operating within the social housing sector in Wales.

The introduction of the new Commission for Racial Equality Code of Practice on Racial Equality in Housing (CRE, 2005) highlights the continued need to monitor and respond to the disadvantage that minority ethnic people experience both in the housing market and generally in life chances. Although there has been improvement for some minority ethnic communities, overall differences still persist in life chances, educational opportunities and type and quality of housing available to people from minority ethnic communities.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into certain themes and discourses that have emerged from two research projects on gender and racial equality in higher education in Sweden and South Africa.

Drawing on discourse analysis using a Foucauldian lens, and Universalism concepts premised on Robert Merton's scientific narratives, social texts are analysed to bring out diversity themes that shape individual research identities as positioned in South Africa and Sweden.

The findings indicate that two common themes have emerged during the research process: marginalized discourses of ethnicity and “race” as these emerge in the appointment process; and institutional culture and language. Despite the obvious differences between the countries there appear to be similar discourses at work in the education policy documents such as “gender equality” and “diversity”. The themes listed above appeared to be central for understanding how “gender equality” and “diversity” strategies operate through ethicised/racialized discourses in researchers' everyday academic lives in similar but not identical contexts.

To be able to determine if these findings can be abstracted to a more general level, further investigations on how gender and race/ethnicity operate in the everyday lives of researchers in different socio‐cultural contexts will need to be conducted.

The paper offers new insights into how global discourses on “gender equality” and “diversity” operate in similar but not identical academic contexts and how academics respond to them on the level of social interaction as well as on the level of institutional culture.

The National Health Service (NHS) is the largest employer in the UK but, despite decades of equal opportunities legislation, its senior management workforce does not reflect the diversity of either the wider NHS workforce or the UK population. The aim of the paper is to consider the range of management interventions available to organisations like the NHS to deliver change in the area of promotion of Black and minority ethnic staff.

Intervention programmes in a range of public and private organisations are reviewed and the nature of barriers to promotion and the range of interventions to overcome these are explored. The paper uses the paradigm of institutional racism to examine the ways in which the NHS discriminates against certain sections of its workforce. The methods used include a literature review combined with key stakeholder interviews. A comparative dimension which involved a review of research on leadership initiatives in the USA was also undertaken.

The literature review found that there were a range of initiatives which could be implemented by public organisations such as the NHS to increase the presence of Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) staff in senior management positions. Most of these interventions were largely focused on the individual. Much more progress on institutional or organisational change needed to be made before the NHS could be perceived as a model employer in this area. The literature review also indicated that there is little published research on such initiatives within other European Union countries.

The paper is targeted at both policy makers and human resource officers responsible for equality and diversity issues within large organisations, who have a remit to improve the career pathways of staff. The analysis provided offers a set of critical tools and interventions that have not hitherto been well examined in the UK context.

The purpose of this research is to investigate equality policy development through an examination of The Equality Standard: A Framework for Sport and consider implications for practitioners and research‐based alternatives.

A textual analysis of The Equality Standard: A Framework for Sport.

The Equality Standard represents a shift from historic “one suit fits all” versions of equality policy creation in sports organisations. It is limited, however, by a reliance on formalised audit measures, limited encouragement of organisational involvement in creating equality policies, a reluctance to acknowledge powerful, taken‐for‐granted assumptions about equality, and an inability to encourage organisations to reflect on their history and culture.

Calls for future research into the further critique of audit‐based approaches to equality implementation and stronger links between academic research and practitioner experience.

To encourage individuals to critically examine equality within sports organisations with a view to adopting a more reflective framework of equality in which to address organisational processes.

This research contributes an analysis of recent equality policy development in UK sport. It uses textual analysis to examine policy in order to offer alternative avenues for policy development.

Building on the contributions of chaos and complexity theories, this paper aims to conceptualize how the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were able to transform chaos (randomness) into order (integration). More specifically, it aims to identify the qualities by which such leadership worked in the context of conflict and cultural confrontations, which is, leading at the edge of chaos.

This research follows a qualitative approach in data collection and analysis; it narrates and analyses biographic data as well as literature about these three prominent leaders. Common qualities of these leaders are explored in-depth, discussed and linked.

Success in leading at the edge of chaos was attributed to the following leadership qualities: vision, non-violence and tolerance. This paper conceptualizes Gandhi, King and Mandela's embodiment of these qualities in transforming difference and disagreement to unity and how they inspired and developed their societies at home and all over the world. This paper concludes with the following results: Dr King, Gandhi and Mandela were visionary leaders; the three leaders had a vision about the future of freedom, equality and peace. More importantly, they were able to hearts and minds, and convey their visions to followers and to society at large. They struggled to achieve their goals non-violently, but knew that violence could destroy society due to unbalanced power structures. In the fight for their people's emancipation/freedom, they avoided ethnic, racial and religious discrimination. The three leaders were politically, culturally and socially tolerant.

By identifying their leadership qualities and analyzing their leadership mechanisms, this paper stresses the necessity of the emergence and preservation of leadership as exhibited by King, Gandhi, Mandela and many other influential leaders. Leaders, committed to enrichment and sustainability of cultural diversity and nurturing of tolerance, can play a role in unifying nations. Practically put, today’s leaders need to rethink their strategies, by taking into consideration what Gandhi, King and Mandela have contributed to leadership in dealing with cultural diversity and conflict. Furthermore, leaders must extend the applicability of such leadership to include the ending of violence in every facet of people's lives, and work publicly to overcome the challenges encountering human kind such as nuclear weapons, war, poverty, racism, global warming, drugs, religious bigotry and violence of any kind. That is, today's leaders need to lead at the edge of chaos due to the ongoing conflicts around the globe.

This paper uniquely conceptualizes leadership qualities by analyzing and comparing literature and biographical data of the above-mentioned leaders. The study also contributes to the existing literature on leadership using an interdisciplinary approach by proving the mechanisms by which leadership transforms chaos into order within the context of cultural diversity and confrontation, where studies are rare. This research contributes to the theory of leaderships at three levels. First, it offers an interdisciplinary theory on leadership qualities by linking these qualities with chaos and complexity theories. Second, unlike the majority of literature which views leadership from a business or public leadership perspective, this research provides a new perspective of leadership for cultural diversity. Third, it highlights the role models of three exemplary leaders for each of whom previous literature is lacking.

Companies' voices on social justice issues, such as racial justice, gender equality and LGBTQ rights, have become increasingly prevalent. To contribute to current knowledge around corporate communication on social justice, this study aims to understand the differential effects of three types of corporate social justice statements – symbolic statements, substantive statements on external actions and substantive statements on internal actions.

A between-subjects experiment was conducted (N = 502), with different types of statements as the independent variable and corporate reputation and perceived corporate relationship-building efforts as outcomes. The three dimensions of perceived authenticity (i.e. perceived benevolence, transparency and commitment) were included as parallel mediators.

This study found that compared to symbolic statements, substantive statements on external or internal actions generated higher perceived authenticity on at least one of the three dimensions, which in turn, led to a more positive corporate reputation and perceived relationship-building efforts. Substantive statements on external actions and on internal actions also had differential indirect effects on the outcomes through different dimensions of perceived authenticity. Partisanship did not have a moderating effect on the mediating effects of perceived authenticity.

This study highlights the importance of authenticity in corporate social justice communication and reveals practical implications about how businesses should communicate with publics when engaging in social justice issues.

This study is among the earliest efforts to examine the effects of different corporate social justice statements. It contributes to the existing literature by demonstrating the impacts of perceived authenticity on publics' evaluation of companies and opens up an avenue for future research to further examine various authenticity dimensions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of discrimination in the workplace; and to draw general lessons, which might help to develop appropriate policies to reduce discrimination in the workplace setting.

A mixed‐methods approach was used in the research, which consisted of self‐administrated questionnaires (n = 115), in‐depth interviews (n = 10) and group consultations (n = 20).

The paper provides empirical evidence that workers continue to face subtle forms of discrimination despite the implementation of numerous Employment Acts, designed to protect employees from unequal treatment due to their gender or ethnic origin. Workers' perceptions of discrimination were found to be positively associated with increased stress, intentions to seek new employment positions, and decreased satisfaction, commitment and citizenship behaviours. More education and awareness, coupled with changing managers' and employees' attitudes, perceptions and behaviours in today's organizations, are important strategies in tackling discrimination and promoting a more diverse workforce.

This paper brings together a number of important themes, highlighting and synthesising the complex relationship between discrimination and its manifestations, and its impact on discriminated‐against individuals and groups in terms of access to, and progression within, the labour market. Research assistants from the target group were employed. This innovative research method not only enabled authors to get closer to the knowledge and experience of the target groups in relation to the barriers affecting these groups but also empowered them and enhanced the research.