Diversity management has been a dominant HR practice to level the playing field for individuals with different ascriptive characteristics. Much of extant research explores different practices under the umbrella term of diversity management, with limited attention to their effectiveness. This study attempts to assess how different practices promote gender and racial representation among state agencies.

While numerous in forms, this study focuses on a good many practices that have received wide acceptance and deployment: diversity structure, diversity training, diversity HR policies and diversity culture. Evaluating how each of these factors contributes to bureaucratic representation has real policy implications. Moreover, it is expected that deliberate interventions may help organizations to achieve better results on diversity. By presenting intentional invention (i.e. information sharing etc) to major HR managers in state agencies, this study further evaluate how such intervention is related to bureaucratic representation.

The sample targeted at over 200 agencies in 27 states, and was surveyed twice to solicit data on their diversity practice and outcomes. Methodologically speaking, this study has two contributions. First, the use of multilevel models helps to address the fact that managers working in the same stage may share more common attributes than their peers in other states. Second, by using the longitudinal data, this study intentionally explores the changes on representation over time and explores how the change is related to different institutional factors and intentional interventions.