Inventing Equal Opportunity

Winner of the 2010 Max Weber Award in the Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section of the American Sociological Association Co-Winner of the 2012 Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award, American Sociological Association One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2009 "Frank Dobbin's impressive Inventing Equal Opportunity documents the crucial role played by the personnel profession in translating equal employment law into practice... Dobbin makes a powerful argument about the importance of long-overlooked personnel managers in creating the legal environment that governs so much of an American's working life."--Science "In this superb book, Dobbin explains the process through which white males have now become 'victims' of a system intended to uplift disadvantaged groups; at the same time, it reveals the fallacy of judicial neutrality in civil rights cases... Overall, Dobbin tells a clear, well-documented, fascinating story about workplace relations."--R.L. Hogler, Choice "Inventing Equal Opportunity provides a much needed corrective to our understanding of the workings of corporate America in the face of external pressures surrounding inequality and law... Consequent to [its] many strengths, I have no doubt that Inventing Equal Opportunity will find a welcome home on the 'must read' shelf among sociologists and graduate students of inequality, law, organizations, professions, and work."--Vincent J. Roscigno, Contemporary Sociology "Dobbin?s book is an eye-opening account of how a professional group used demands for equal opportunity to expand its professional jurisdiction... Through their policies and programs, these experts heightened expectations for fair treatment and promoted a more sociological understanding of racism and sexism inside organizations."--Christine L. Williams, Gender and Society "This impressive book makes a convincing case for human resources professionals as key players in the implementation of civil rights laws."--Edward Berkowitz, Journal of Social History "Frank Dobbin has written a careful institutional analysis of how human resource professionals invented equal opportunity. The book is a pleasure to read and a field guide for what historically careful institutional analyses should look like. For institutionalists and law and society scholars the book is necessary reading. Inventing Equal Opportunity is likely to become one of the definitive books on the history of equal opportunity law and corporate personnel practice."--Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, American Journal of Sociology "This is an excellent, smart book attuned to the implications its argument has for our understanding of social movements, racial progress, and federalism."--Jennifer Delton, Journal of American History