Screen LibraryWorking law : courts, corporations, and symbolic civil rights /
Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, virtually all companies have antidiscrimination policies in place. Although these policies represent some progress, women and minorities remain underrepresented within the workplace as a whole and even more so when you look at high-level positions. They als...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
The University of Chicago Press,
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| Publisher Address: | Chicago, IL : |
| Publication Dates: | 2016. |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Series: |
The Chicago series in law and society
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| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, virtually all companies have antidiscrimination policies in place. Although these policies represent some progress, women and minorities remain underrepresented within the workplace as a whole and even more so when you look at high-level positions. They also tend to be less well paid. How is it that discrimination remains so prevalent in the American workplace despite the widespread adoption of policies designed to prevent it? One reason for the limited success of antidiscrimination policies, argues Lauren B. Edelman, is that the law regulating companies is broad and ambiguous, and managers therefore play a critical role in shaping what it means in daily practice. Often, what results are policies and procedures that are largely symbolic and fail to dispel long-standing patterns of discrimination. Even more troubling, these meanings of the law that evolve within companies tend to eventually make their way back into the legal domain, inconspicuously influencing lawyers for both plaintiffs and defendants and even judges. When courts look to the presence of antidiscrimination policies and personnel manuals to infer fair practices and to the presence of diversity training programs without examining whether these policies are effective in combating discrimination and achieving racial and gender diversity, they wind up condoning practices that deviate considerably from the legal ideals. -- |
| Carrier Form: | xii, 349 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages [305]-336) and index. |
| ISBN: |
9780226400761 022640076X 9780226400624 022640062X |
| Index Number: | KF3464 |
| CLC: | D971.225 |
| Call Number: | D971.225/E217 |
| Contents: |
The interplay of law and organizations. Introduction ; The endogeneity of law ; Ambiguous law and the erosion of the progressive vision in the courts -- Law in the workplace. Professional framing of the legal environment ; The diffusion of symbolic structures ; The managerialization of law -- The workplace in law. The mobilization of symbolic structures ; Legal deference to symbolic compliance ; Symbolic civil rights and the endogeneity of law. |