Managing diversity: the best for everyone.

As a big city sociologist I celebrate diversity. The evening before Thanksgiving Day is special. I like to watch people buying turkeys at the supermarket. There are white people, black people, Asian people. Happy families converse in English, Spanish, Chinese, and languages I can not place as their items beep through the checkout. These are gentiles, Jews, and Buddhists. This is Los Angeles, but it might as well be New York, Chicago, or Houston. Thanksgiving is an American holiday--the American holiday. These modern city folks have much in common with the Pilgrims. They celebrate a holiday that consecrates hard work and rejoices in its bounty. Many have migrated from elsewhere. They toil in unfamiliar surroundings to build better futures. Like yesterday's Puritans, they are not simply economic refugees; they have also come to escape tyrants and state religions. American cities brim with people eager to brave today's frontiers in search not only of plenty, but freedom to live according to their own beliefs, values, and cultures. To prosper and be one's self is still America's draw. "Diversity management," as described by Trisha Svehla, will help keep this tradition strong. A principle of growing importance in business and industry, diversity management calls for action in two areas. First, the diversity management approach to human relations promotes workplace practices that allow people outside America's current mainstream to pursue successful, productive careers. Second, diversity management emphasizes development of products and services useful and attractive to consumers outside the mainstream. Svehla describes America's present-day workforce as more diverse than ever before. She writes that while white, middle-aged, English-speaking men have traditionally dominated the workplace, now, the foreign-born, women, minorities, young people, and elders fill positions at all levels. These groups bring new life to America's offices and factories. But, according to Svehla, they have values and needs very different from traditional white men. Successful diversity management can help transform modern America's diversity from a problem to a solution. Its tools enable managers to merge distinctly different people into strong work teams and find customers in unexpected places. Productive employees and satisfied consumers generate profits. Affirmative action has mandated redress of past wrongs through requirements often perceived as coercive. Diversity management, on the other hand, promises mutual benefits in stronger business organizations and an expanding economy. But ideas themselves do not solve problems. Managers need a strong factual basis for action. Diversity consulting, a rapidly growing industry, promises a great deal. Experts often put the "happy face" on deep social divisions. Sensitivity training and in-house language instruction, though useful, seem superficial. Solid results will require highly focused, practical steps. Successful strategies begin with an objective look at the values and traditions that help define America. E PLURIBUS UNUM America has always been diverse. Even so, Americans share a distinct culture. E pluribus unum, the familiar slogan on U.S. coins, expresses this important truth. Translated from the Latin, this phrase means "out of many, one." Since the discovery of the New World, people from a multitude of civilizations and cultures have immigrated to what became the United States. Many groups have kept their own traditions and tastes. But over the generations, waves of immigrants and migrants from farm to city have come to share a common core of values. The central part of the American value system is the same as that celebrated at the first Thanksgiving. First is material well-being through hard work. Freedom to live according to one's own conscience follows as a close second. Think of the Pilgrims as the first "boat people." As a nation, we still share their basic goals; out of many we have become one in this key area. …