A Comparative Analysis of Federal Agencies' Integration of Equity and Diversity Practices Addressing Minority Representation in Senior Executive Service (original) (raw)
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The federal government acknowledges minority underrepresentation in the Senior Executive Service (SES) level position is a persistent problem. Why do policymakers adopt certain solutions and initiatives to address this problem? Federal agencies copy the private sector's best practices to legitimize the solutions and initiatives such as mentoring, succession planning, and diversity initiatives, further legitimizing themselves solutions to address this problem until 1993 when deliberate inclusion was eliminated with by removing these initiatives and requirements. Using content analysis, my primary data were 14 documents from a 17-year period, 1994-2011. I assessed how often solutions or initiatives were selected by policymakers to determine prevalence. I suggest, in search of legitimacy, initiatives are selected outside their initial context and these solutions and initiatives have shifting justifications with convergence across time. Findings in this study indicate the most prevalent solution or initiative is workforce and succession planning strategies. The justification most often used was not best practices as I suggested but Representative Bureaucracy, which was contextually relevant in addressing SES. There was pattern of shifting justifications when selecting solutions and initiatives but no pattern of convergence across time. One interesting finding in this study was the prevalence of seven out of 16 solutions and initiatives were recommended by a cross-section of policymakers over a 17-year period, which may suggests mimetic influences are without contextually relevant solutions.
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