Managing Equal Opportunity Through Strategic Organisation Development

Most approaches to the management of equal opportunity in the “race” field in the UK have emphasised policy development and communication, gender and ethnic monitoring, and attention to developing recruitment and selection practices that ensure a more representative workforce. Race training, especially racism awareness training, has often been given a key role. Organisation development (OD) approaches have not tended to be influential, despite the origins of OD in addressing practical problems of race relations. Drawing on empirical work with assessment procedures, in particular the use of developmental assessment centres, and on work on improving collaboration between nurses and social workers so as to enable women of Asian origin to enjoy greater access to hospital social work services, it is argued that such OD approaches as teambuilding, survey feedback and targeted career development are crucial to the management of equal opportunity, and to the management of cultural change.