Models for Affirmative Action Planning and Evaluation

Two models are presented as aids in setting realistic numerical goals for the employment of women and minority persons, and in evaluating progress towards meeting such goals. By modelling personnel flows in terms of hiring and persistence rates for various job categories, we develop a consistent structure for projecting future employment patterns as a function of hiring goals. These hiring goals themselves are made to depend on the growth-rate of staff size, the relative availability of women and minority candidates in the potential pool of job applicants, and the organization's policies towards equity in hiring. The second model considers a small organizational unit with fixed staff size. By formulating the process of attrition and replacement with new hires as a Markov chain, we are able to make probability statements about the number of positions that will be occupied by women and/or minority persons at some future time. The relationship of the these probabilities to the distribution among job applicants is made explicit. Applications of these models to faculty and staff planning at Stanford University are briefly discussed.