The Diversity Index

5 The Cost of Exclusion

AT THE TIME, THE PLANS FOR PROGRESS CONTRACTS WERE kept confidential, and there was no way of verifying how far each company had agreed to go. A review of the contracts nearly 50 years after they were signed revealed that most of the contractors agreed to the boilerplate language, albeit with differing levels of enthusiasm. (See Figure 5.1.)

United Aircraft (now United Technologies Corporation) wrote a sincere, four-and-a-half-page, single-spaced contract that agreed to the basic points. The Boeing Company produced a very straightforward contract of five double-spaced pages that also hewed to the main points as Lockheed had. The agreements of Douglas Aircraft and Western Electric toed the line. These companies pledged ...