Book excerpt: Just when you think you′ve read all about managing diversity and you′ve concluded that there is nothing new to say, Patricia Arredondo′s book offers a fresh, insightful, and helpful blueprint for beginning and moving forward with a diversity initiative. Successful Diversity Management Initiatives not only outlines specific steps for a managing diversity process but also discusses the rationale for procedures, identifies potential roadblocks, and explores how barriers could be managed. Patricia Arredondo gives specific examples based on her research and her experiences within organizations so that the reader obtains an integrative and systematic perspective about the issues involved. Reading this book is essential for all management educators, organizational change teams, and consultants in the field interested in getting up-to-speed about the issues. Also, managers and executives who are engaged in gaining competitive advantage through the talents and abilities of the changing workforce and knowing about the needs of their diverse customers, will gain insight into the very real factors affecting their organizations. --Anna Duran, Ph.D, Principal, Anna Duran & Associates & Adjunct Professor, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University "In this book Dr. Patricia Arredondo really captures the kind of experiences we have had as to what works and what doesn′t in shaping a diversity initiative. Her concrete suggestions provide a very useful road map leading to a successful diversity initiative." --William Watkins Jr., Executive Vice President, and Director of Economic Development, Narragansett Electric Thousands of organizations are beginning to address the issue of workforce diversity management. This important new book helps answer questions typically raised by these organizations as they face diversity-related change. Why should we do this? How will we know we are being successful? What kind of change can we expect? Successful Diversity Management Initiatives presents specific phases and steps to help plan, direct, and manage strategic organizational development. Serving as a developmental model for change, this model emphasizes on-going evaluation and clarification during each phase and proposes a prototype for measuring both qualitative and quantitative results. Vignettes based on organizational experiences are used to demonstrate how particular steps in the model occur and how they hold generic value. Intended for practical application, the book is supported by case examples, summaries at the end of each chapter that include a checklist for organizational self-assessment, models, and a glossary. Successful Diversity Management Initiatives is appropriate for professionals who have responsibility for designing and implementing programs as well as graduate students in organizational development, industrial psychology, and human resources.