News

• Diverse versus nondiverse workplaces
• Deportable versus nondeportable immigrants
• Dular versus non-Dular nutrition
• Deal versus no deal for North Korea

Diversity Programs Deemed Necessary but Not Sufficient for Diversity

Creating diverse workplaces is a growing priority for U.S. companies and a cottage industry for consulting firms specializing in diversity management, but adhering to the best diversity management practices “in themselves may not enable a company to achieve a high level of diversity,” according to a new RAND paper.

Firms that are recognized for workforce diversity share a core set of motives and practices, including both a conviction among senior managers that diversity improves business performance and a strong leadership commitment to various diversity planning and implementation activities beyond the standard recruitment, retention, and promotion programs, according to the paper.

The study compared the practices of eight companies ranked among Fortune magazine’s “50 Best Companies for Minorities” against what the existing diversity literature says about best diversity practices. The study then contrasted these eight companies with six others classified under Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.” The latter companies had been recognized for exemplary human resources departments, but not for their level of diversity.

Best Companies Cited for “Diversity” and “Human Relations” Are Concentrated in Certain Sectors but Don’t Overlap Much

SOURCE: Managing Diversity in Corporate America, 2008.

As expected, the companies with exemplary diversity generally did better in following all or the majority of the best diversity guidelines than did the companies with exemplary human resources departments. More interesting, however, was the contrasting motivations for diversity between the two types of companies.

“While best diversity companies favored diversity for reasons related to boosting business performance, best human resources companies stressed nonbusiness reasons like an enhanced work environment that results from improvements in basic recruiting, retention, and promotion programs,” noted Jeff Marquis, a RAND political scientist and lead study author.

When looking across all 150 companies on both Fortune lists, the study uncovered intriguing patterns. As shown in the figure, the best diversity companies were concentrated in certain industries, such as accommodation and food services or arts and entertainment, whereas the best human relations companies tended to be in the health care and professional services sectors. There was very little overlap between best diversity firms and best human resources firms with respect to industry. A broad swath of U.S. industrial sectors had no representatives on either one of the magazine’s annual lists.

The results show that context — in this case, the industry sector — could play a large role in determining diversity. Other contextual factors that might play a role include demographic trends and a company’s size, age, location, and history with diversity issues.

“One of the key messages we take away from the study is that companies recognized for exemplary diversity follow a core set of motives and behaviors,” said Marquis. “But diversity results are not only a matter of strategy. They also depend on companies’ operating environments.”

For more information:
Managing Diversity in Corporate America: An Exploratory Analysis, RAND/OP-206-RC, ISBN 978-0-8330-4305-4, 2008.

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Deportable Immigrants Pose No Unique Threat to Public Safety

One factor driving the recent crackdown on illegal immigration in some areas of the country is a fear that illegal immigrants increase crime. But recidivism rates are no higher among deportable immigrants than among similar nondeportable ones, according to a RAND study published in the February 2008 issue of Criminology & Public Policy.

“Our findings run counter to the notion that illegal immigrants are more likely than other immigrants to cycle in and out of the local criminal justice system,” said Laura Hickman, a RAND researcher and assistant professor with the Criminal Justice Policy Research Institute at Portland State University.

“Deportable” immigrants are those who either entered the United States illegally or entered legally but whose permission to remain in the country has lapsed or has been revoked. “Nondeportable” immigrants are those who are either legal or naturalized.

The study followed foreign-born male inmates (including 517 deportable and 780 nondeportable immigrants) released from the Los Angeles County Jail in August and September 2002, tracking them for a year to see whether there were differences between the two groups in their rates of rearrest.

When Adjusting for Known Recidivism Factors, Deportable Immigrants Are No More Likely to Be Rearrested Than Are Nondeportable Immigrants

SOURCE: “Are Deportable Aliens a Unique Threat to Public Safety? Comparing the Recidivism of Deportable and Nondeportable Aliens,” Criminology & Public Policy, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2008, pp. 59–82, Laura J. Hickman, Marika J. Suttorp. NOTE: “Adjusted” means the data account for factors known to cause recidivism, including age, number of previous arrests, and the type of previous charge (such as having at least one property-related charge and/or one drug charge).

There was a difference between deportable and nondeportable immigrants in the percentage that were rearrested — 43 percent compared with 35 percent, respectively. But these simple percentages fail to account for other factors well known to be related to recidivism. Thus, comparison of these two percentages is not very informative, “like comparing apples and oranges,” Hickman said.

“Research has shown that some individual-level factors are consistently related to recidivism, and we have to take such factors into account to make a fair comparison,” she noted. These factors include demographic characteristics (such as age), criminal history, and reason for the original incarceration. For example, across all kinds of crime research, younger people and those jailed on drug charges have higher rates of recidivism than do other groups.

When researchers adjusted for differences between the immigrant groups on recidivism-related factors, the raw difference between the two groups shrank nearly in half. Most important, the analysis showed that this adjusted difference was not significant. As shown by the dashed vertical line in the figure, the top two confidence intervals overlap, indicating that the adjusted difference in rearrest between the two groups falls within the margin of error. Just as we interpret margin of error in election polls, for example, the results suggest that the five-percentage-point difference between the two groups is not meaningful.

The study illustrates two basic points, said Hickman. “First, it highlights the need for basic descriptive research on immigration and crime.” She said the lack of research has allowed the void to be filled by ideologically based assumptions and untested rhetoric.

Second, the study sends the cautionary message that simple percentages can be misleading. Such percentages “are the easiest for researchers to produce and for the public to understand, but we cannot learn much from them.”

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Grassroots Program Seems to Reduce Malnutrition in India at Low Cost

India accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world’s malnourished children, but a new program shows promise in cost-effectively reducing child malnutrition there, according to a study published in the September 2007 issue of Food and Nutrition Bulletin.

Initiated by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in collaboration with the Indian states of Bihar and Jharkhand, the “Dular strategy” is a nutrition program that capitalizes on grassroots community resources. The emphasis is on neighborhood-based “local resource persons” who track the health status of women and of children up to three years old. (Dular is the Hindi word for “love and care.”)

“The cost . . . is just over $16 per child per year.”

Launched in Bihar in 1999 and in Jharkhand in 2001 — areas with a high proportion of India’s malnourished children — the program consists of a low-cost, replicable strategy of family and community involvement. “Such programs could become a cost-effective instrument for reducing child malnutrition in India,” said Tamara Dubowitz, a RAND health policy researcher who directed the study.

The program objectives include increased prenatal care attendance, improved delivery of breast milk and colostrum (the first, antibody-rich secretion from the mammary glands after birth), improved nutritional practices, and decreased malnutrition.

In the study, villages were divided into Dular and non-Dular villages. Non-Dular villages received services normally provided by India’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), including standard prenatal counseling and well-baby checkups. Dular villages received the services from ICDS but also had a team of local villagers trained to be health workers responsible for consistent contact, follow-up, and emphasis on such key issues as maternal nutrition, the need to feed infants colostrum, and breastfeeding.

“Dular Regular” villages were those with initial Dular activities, including identification of local resource persons and delivery of their preliminary services. “Dular Intensive” villages received the program in its full implementation.

The figure shows that there were statistically significant differences in all seven of the measured outcomes between Dular and non-Dular villages. The former had significantly more mothers following positive practices for prenatal care, delivery of breast milk, delivery of colostrum, up-to-date immunizations, use of iodized salt, maintenance of proper iodized salt status, and use of childbirth delivery kits.

Particularly noteworthy is that young children in Dular areas had a 45 percent lower prevalence of severe malnutrition and were four times more likely to receive colostrum than were those in non-Dular villages.

“The far greater Dular outreach capacity with the use of local resource persons, focusing even on a relatively small number of behavioral changes, can have a considerable impact at a low cost,” said Dubowitz. “The cost of the Dular overlay of services, excluding ICDS costs, is just over $16 per child per year.”

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How North Korea Can Modernize Politically, Economically, Peacefully

The United States and other nations can promote peaceful modernization of North Korea’s political, economic, and security systems using policy recommendations put forth by a unique multinational collaboration, according to a RAND report.

The proposed policy changes “won’t work overnight, and they won’t work at all if North Korean leaders are not convinced that their country will gain from change,” said Charles Wolf Jr., lead author and a RAND senior economic adviser. “But by collaborating with other nations and working together to encourage North Korea to modernize, the United States has a better chance to create a win-win situation that benefits all.”

The study stems from a two-and-a-half-year collaboration among RAND and five other institutions from China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea, each with its own interest in modernizing North Korea.

The study outlines a set of policy instruments that could be used to engender fundamental, but peaceful, system change in North Korea. The instruments fit within four “baskets” — political, economic, security, and sociocultural — whose components could be packaged into alternative “portfolios” for modernizing the North Korean system.

AP IMAGES/DAVID GUTTENFELDER  The audience stands for the U.S. national anthem at the start of a concert by the New York Philharmonic at the East Pyongyang Grand Theater in the North Korean capital on February 26, 2008, marking the largest cultural exchange ever held between the two countries — which are still technically at war. The flags of both countries are on stage.

Researchers from the six institutions agreed on a consensus portfolio. It includes these components: verifiable denuclearization of the Korean peninsula; a six-nation declaration of nonaggression and peaceful coexistence; direct bilateral and multilateral talks aimed toward normalization of relations with North Korea; encouragement of fledgling market-oriented experiments, such as free economic zones; assistance for developing small businesses and protecting private property rights; creation of modern financial and budgetary systems; generation of government revenues by taxing legitimate enterprises; joint programs for medical monitoring, telecommunications, and the environment; and academic, cultural, and arts exchanges.

The consensus plan calls for implementation in two phases, each encompassing a mixture of incentives and disincentives, rewards and penalties, and actions taken by North Korea in parallel with actions taken by the five other countries.

The study has been translated into Korean. “As such, it will be distributed through intermediaries into the North Korean system with the hope its ideas will be discussed and pursued by potential change agents in North Korea,” said Wolf.

“Although modernization of North Korea would benefit the interests of the United States and its allies,” he concluded, “North Korea also has much to gain, including higher economic growth rates, a larger domestic economy, enhanced political legitimacy, improved prospects for stability, the survival of the current regime and its leadership, expanded interactions between North and South Korea, and wider participation and increased influence in the international community.”

The other institutions participating with RAND were the China Reform Forum, of Beijing; the Center for Contemporary Korean Studies at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, of Moscow; the Institute for International Policy Studies, of Tokyo; and the POSCO Research Institute and the Research Institute for National Security Affairs, both of Seoul.

For more information:
Modernizing the North Korean System: Objectives, Method, Application, RAND/MG-710-SRF/MCF/RC, ISBN 978-0-8330-4406-8, 2008.

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