Ensuring Minority Success in Corporate Management

Book excerpt: To be a corporate executive in America is to achieve a universally recognized measure of personal and professional success. The high income, privilege, prestige, and authority enjoyed by most corporate executives all attest to "making it." That is why the advancement of racial and ethnic minorities into the executive suite is one of the key barometers of the nation's progress toward full equality of opportunity. But the quest for equal opportunity in corporate management has been difficult and frustrating. Black, Hispanic, and Asian men and women are rarely found among those who run or significantly influence the direction of American corporations. The wide gap between the expectation and the reality is a continuing topic of interest to business leaders and racial and ethnic minorities, as well as to scholars of the business scene. This book edited by Thompson and DiTomaso contributes significantly to our understanding of this problem, and, most importantly, provides useful guidelines on what to do about it. Interest in the diversity of corporate management comes at a time of unprecendented challenge to United States success in the world economy. American business must now compete against aggressive producers and fi nanciers in Western Europe and Japan. More competition also has emerged from some of the rapidly developing countries in Latin America and the Pacific Rim. Our ability to design, manufacture, sell, and export goods and services in a global marketplace will increasingly determine our standard of living and prominence on the world stage.