Diversity rhetoric and the managerialization of law

This article examines the rise of diversity rhetoric in U.S. management and how that rhetoric reframes ideas inherent in civil rights law. Quantitativ e and qualitative content analyses of the professional management literatur e (mid-1980s-mid-1990s) illustrate a managerialization of law, a process by which legal ideas are refigured by managerial ways of thinking as they flo w across the boundaries of legal fields and into managerial and organizatio nal fields. The managerial conception of diversity adds a variety of nonleg al dimensions of diversity (e.g., personality traits) to the legally protec ted categories like race and sex, and it disassociates diversity from civil rights law.