Despite the fact that diversity management is now a recognized field of scholarly research and professional practice, there is surprisingly little consensus as to how to design diversity practices that work. Recent research demonstrates that programs that establish oversight for diversity (e.g., diversity councils, diversity staff, targeted recruitment programs) tend to produce the greatest inroads for women and minorities in management. However, how diversity practices actually work to challenge or reinforce existing social inequalities in firms remains less clear. In this article, I provide an inside look into diversity recruitment – a type of diversity practice generally considered to be effective in reducing organizational inequalities – in elite professional service firms. Drawing upon interview and ethnographic evidence from recruitment and hiring in elite law firms, investment banks, and management consulting firms, I analyze what diversity recruitment looks like in these firms on-the-ground. I find that although elite professional service firms tend to have the ingredients for success on paper, they face significant obstacles in increasing the representation of racial minorities among new hires in practice. I argue that: (1) the presence of structural and status divides between those responsible for overseeing diversity recruitment and those who have the power and authority to make hiring decisions, and (2) widespread cultural beliefs among decision-makers that diversity is not a valid criterion of evaluation, stymie firms’ efforts to diversify. My findings highlight how in order to be successful in translating diversity programs into actual results, those charged with overseeing diversity programs need not only formal organizational authority but also sufficient power and informal status to wield influence in decision-making.

This case describes a newly promoted middle manager in a global, multi-cultural organization who is challenged by a number of factors in the workplace which are impacting her and her team’s ability to perform to the expectations of her regional manager. While it would be easy to blame the new manager, deeper analysis in fact reveals that many forces are at work here in addition to her inexperience including communication of strategy and performance objectives, mismanaged team members, cultural inconsistencies, and a lack of leadership direction and/or skill from the very top to her supervising manager.

Three studies contrasting Indian and American negotiators tested hypotheses derived from theory proposing why there are cultural differences in trust and how cultural differences in trust influence negotiation strategy. Study 1 (a survey) documented that Indian negotiators trust their counterparts less than American negotiators. Study 2 (a negotiation simulation) linked American and Indian negotiators’ self-reported trust and strategy to their insight and joint gains. Study 3 replicated and extended Study 2 using independently-coded negotiation strategy data, allowing for stronger causal inference. Overall, the strategy associated with Indian negotiators’ reluctance to extend interpersonal (as opposed to institutional) trust produced relatively poor outcomes. Our data support an expanded theoretical model of negotiation, linking culture to trust, strategies, and outcomes.

This article discusses how social exchange relations between producers and consumers affect the prices producers charge their clients in the large corporate law market. The embeddedness framework offers one of several possible sociological accounts of how social behavior affects price setting. It argues that economic actors, to varying degrees, are imbedded in social relations and networks of affiliations that shape the actors' opportunities for value creation in ways that differ from markets or hierarchies. The model examines how the quality of relationships as well as the positions actors hold in a network affect their access to information and their ability to govern transactions. On the level of relationship quality, ties vary between arm's-length and embedded. Arm's-length ties characterize the atomistic and socially detached market relationship. Such ties have been shown to be an excellent means of cheaply acquiring public information, such as advertisements or published data. Embedded ties differ from arm's-length ties in that commercial exchanges between actors are embedded in social attachments and affiliations, a process that injects into the business exchange expectations of trust and shared norms of compliance. Replacing the motives associated with arm's-length ties, these expectations are used to govern exchanges with persons that one comes to know well.

The first across-the-table negotiation between Google and China concluded successfully in 2006, when Google received a license to establish a local domain (google.cn) targeted at Chinese Internet users and not subject to the “Great Firewall”. During these negotiations both Google and the Chinese government struggled to reach an outcome that would be acceptable to their constituents. Google was caught between pleasing its shareholders and preserving its reputation for free access to information, while China was balancing the desire for cutting-edge search technology and the concern that liberal access to information would undermine its political-economic model. In the end, the negotiation resulted in Google operating two domains in China: Google.com and Google.cn. On the .cn website, Google complied with Chinese legislation through self-censoring. Google’s search market share in China grew to about 36 percent at the end of 2009.
In early 2010, Google announced that its corporate infrastructure had been the target of a series of China-based cyber attacks and accused the Chinese government of attempting to further limit free speech on the web. These incidents led to a public conflict and private negotiations between Google and the Chinese government, which culminated in July 2010 when the Chinese government renewed the google.cn license knowing that Google was redirecting all Chinese customers search to its google.hk.com site This case concerns the changes in Google and the Chinese government’s environment that led to Google withdrawing services from google.cn and the Chinese government saving face by renewing the google.cn license.
Students will learn that across-the-table negotiations are often preceded by internal negotiations, based on conflicting interests within one party. The case is based on the publicly reported events surrounding two series of negotiations between the U.S. technology giant Google and the Chinese Government regarding Google’s license in China.

The media plays an important role in how the American public understands controversial social and political issues, such as immigration.  The purpose of this article is to examine how key features of the media, such as location (Arizona vs. National) and political ideology (Liberal vs. Conservative) affect the framing of arguments supporting and opposing the anti-immigration bill (Arizona SB 1070).  A Content analysis was conducted using 3 weeks of newspaper articles from two Arizona newspapers (one Conservative, one Liberal) and five national newspapers (three Conservative, two Liberal). Analyses revealed that both location and political ideology influenced the framing.  Specifically, the national newspapers were more likely than Arizona newspapers to frame arguments supporting the bill in terms of threats (e.g., threats to economic and public safety) and to frame arguments against the bill in terms of civil rights issues (e.g., racial profiling).  In terms of political ideology, Conservative newspapers were more likely than Liberal newspapers to frame the bill in terms of economic and public safety threats, but did not differ in mentions of civil rights issues.  The implications for attitudes towards immigrants and legal ethnic minoritiesand for defining the boundaries of the American national identity are discussed.

Although a robust literature in sociology and economics has demonstrated a positive relationship between education and socio-economic attainment, the processes through which formal schooling yields enhanced economic rewards remains less clear. Employers play a crucial role in explaining the economic and social returns to formal schooling. Yet, little is known about how employers, particularly elite employers, use and interpret educational credentials in real-life hiring decisions. In the following article, I analyze how hiring agents in top-tier professional service firms use education to recruit, assess, and select new hires. I find that educational credentials were the most common criteria employers used to solicit and screen resumes. However, it was not the content of education that elite employers valued but rather its prestige. Employers privileged candidates who possessed a super-elite (e.g., top 5) university affiliation and attributed superior cognitive, cultural, and moral qualities to candidates who had been admitted to such an institution, regardless of their actual performance once there. However, attendance at a super-elite university was insufficient for success in resume screens. Importing the logic of elite university admissions, firms performed a secondary resume screen on the status and intensity of candidates’ extracurricular accomplishments and leisure pursuits. I discuss these findings in terms of the changing nature of credentialism and stratification in higher education to suggest that participation in formalized extracurricular activities has become a new credential of moral character that has monetary conversion value in labor markets.

Case (A) describes the situation at the Northlands Ledger, a newspaper on its way out of business due in large part to its publisher and editor’s focus on what they do and want to keep doing rather than on what their customers (readers and advertisers) want. The value proposition to the reader is that ‘we deliver the paper reliably and give you the latest national and international news’. The value proposition to the advertisers is that ‘we print your ads accurately and runs them on time’. Both value propositions are outdated, and, even if they were what the customers wanted—which they are not, neither is executed well. The paper’s key performance indicators—circulation, classified ads and commercial advertising are all in decline despite the fact that the community it serves is growing. The senior management of the Paulus chain that owns this paper has forced the publisher, Allison, to retire and brought another publisher, Potter, in from one of its other papers, The Sun Belt City Star, where Potter was highly successful. However, he cannot simply transfer his success formula from the Star to the Ledger.
Case (B) details his efforts and may be used as a classic example of good change management and leadership practices. Potter established a clear cut set of objectives, formulated a new strategy of responsiveness to readers and advertisers more in line with finding out why they hired the paper in the first place. To implement his new strategy he terminated senior managers and others who he did not feel could contribute to the new paper, and made significant changes in key dimensions of implementation: culture, structure, information and decision support systems, incentives and human resources. Throughout he used a mix of both authoritative and participative change management—a mix that may provoke an interesting class discussion.

Case (A) describes the situation at the Northlands Ledger, a newspaper on its way out of business due in large part to its publisher and editor’s focus on what they do and want to keep doing rather than on what their customers (readers and advertisers) want. The value proposition to the reader is that ‘we deliver the paper reliably and give you the latest national and international news’. The value proposition to the advertisers is that ‘we print your ads accurately and runs them on time’. Both value propositions are outdated, and, even if they were what the customers wanted—which they are not, neither is executed well. The paper’s key performance indicators—circulation, classified ads and commercial advertising are all in decline despite the fact that the community it serves is growing. The senior management of the Paulus chain that owns this paper has forced the publisher, Allison, to retire and brought another publisher, Potter, in from one of its other papers, The Sun Belt City Star, where Potter was highly successful. However, he cannot simply transfer his success formula from the Star to the Ledger.
Case (B) details his efforts and may be used as a classic example of good change management and leadership practices. Potter established a clear cut set of objectives, formulated a new strategy of responsiveness to readers and advertisers more in line with finding out why they hired the paper in the first place. To implement his new strategy he terminated senior managers and others who he did not feel could contribute to the new paper, and made significant changes in key dimensions of implementation: culture, structure, information and decision support systems, incentives and human resources. Throughout he used a mix of both authoritative and participative change management—a mix that may provoke an interesting class discussion.

American women still confront workplace obstacles (e.g., bias against mothers, inflexible workplaces) that hinder their advancement at the upper levels of organizations. Despite these obstacles, most Americans fail to recognize that such gender obstacles still exist. Focusing on mothers who leave the workforce, we propose that the prevalent American assumption that actions are a product of choice conceals workplace obstacles by communicating that opportunities are equal and that behavior is free from contextual influence. Study 1 reveals that stay-at-home mothers who view their own workplace departure as a choice experience greater well-being, but less often recognize workplace obstacles such as discrimination as a source of inequality. Study 2 shows that mere exposure to actions framed as choices increases observers’ belief that society provides equal opportunities and that gender discrimination no longer exists. By concealing the obstacles that women still face, this choice framework may hinder women’s long-term advancement in society.

Choice makes North Americans feel more in control, free, and independent, and thus has many positive consequences for individuals’ motivation and well-being. We report five studies that uncovered novel consequences of choice for public policy and interpersonal judgments. Studies 1 through 3 found that activating the concept of choice decreases support for policies promoting intergroup equality (e.g., affirmative action) and societal benefits (e.g., reducing environmental pollution), but increases support for policies promoting individual rights (e.g., legalizing drugs). Studies 4 and 5 found that activating the concept of choice increases victim blaming and decreases empathy for disadvantaged people. Study 5 found that choice does not decrease Indians’ empathy for disadvantaged individuals, indicating that the social and interpersonal consequences of choice are likely culture-specific. This research suggests that the well-known positive effects of choice for individuals can be accompanied by an array of previously unexamined and potentially negative outcomes for other people and for society.