米国企業におけるダイバーシティ・イニシアティブ－アファーマティブ・アクションからマネジング・ダイバーシティへ－

Abstract

This paper discusses the philosophy and practice of managing diversity have been acquired through implementation of affirmative action and valuing diversity in historical diversity initiatives of corporate America. Affirmative action is now controversial and often criticized for reverse discrimination. Corporate America, by contrast, welcomes managing diversity for competitive advantage as a business strategy. They say one of major factors which drove companies to the new philosophy and practice of managing diversity was the forecast of workforce predicted by Workforce 2000 (Johnston and Packer, 1987), but those could already be seen in the struggles of companies and their employees around affirmative action and valuing diversity before the report. Japanese companies began to conduct managing diversity initiative. It is, however, inevitably required to study the achievement of affirmative action and valuing diversity practices in order to obtain effective managing diversity which is imperative in Japanese companies where especially rank of gender equality is extremely low in the world.