The author demonstrates how corporate personnel experts, not Congress or the courts, determined what equal opportunity meant in practice, designing changes in how employers hire, promote, and fire workers, and ultimately defining what discrimination is, and is not. He shows how Congress and the courts merely endorsed programs devised by corporate personnel.--[book jacket]

Regulating discrimination: the paradox of a weak state -- Washington outlaws discrimination with a broad brush -- The end of Jim Crow: the personnel arsenal put to new purposes -- Washington means business: personnel experts fashion a system of compliance -- Fighting bias with bureaucracy -- The Reagan revolution and the rise of diversity management -- The feminization of HR and work-family programs -- Sexual harassment as employment discrimination -- How personnel defined equal opportunity.

Includes bibliographical references and index.