Inventing Wonderland: The Lives and Fantasies of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J.M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and A.A. Milne

Diversity management programs in the workplace take many forms-sensitivity workshops to raise awareness of ethnic and gender differences, support groups, rewarding the managers for hiring and promoting women and minorities. To Lynch, this ""diversity machine"" is a Trojan horse, an ideologically driven movement that aims to extend affirmative action's top-down hiring campaign by enforcing a policy of ethnic and gender proportionalism and dogmatic multiculturalism. A sociologist at Clarement-McKenna College in California, Lynch credits diversity management with some positive practical outcomes, such as forcing large corporations and government agencies to reexamine their rules, procedures and hiring practices. But when diversity crusaders insist that a Hispanic manager will more effectively manage Hispanic subordinates, or that African Americans tend to be spontaneous and inventive in getting the job done, they are perpetuating stereotypes and fostering their own brand of racial determinism, suggests Lynch. Buttressed by case studies of diversity programs, this rigorous critique claims there is no compelling evidence that such programs decrease tensions or boost productivity or profits. While Lynch broadens familiar arguments against affirmative action and diversity training, his slashing report bogs down in an account of workshops and conferences. (Jan.)