Eight corporations that are committed to addressing diversity in the workplace were part of the study. They included eight Fortune 500 multinational corporations headquartered in Illinois and represented the following industries: food (3), electronics (1), chemicals (1), petroleum (1), pharmaceuticals (1), and specialist retailer (1). The eight multinational corporations combined were responsible for over $180 billion in sales in 1996 and had assets of over $190 billion. Based on the employment figures from the April 1997 issue of Fortune magazine, the eight Fortune 500 multinational corporations employed over 1,002,000 employees. The corporations' sales varied from $10 billion to more than $50 billion, and they had assets from $12 billion to more than $60 billion. The average number of employees in these eight corporations is 125,293.
Efforts were also made to obtain information regarding the amount of money spent by the corporations on diversity initiatives as well as the break down of employees by category (e.g., gender, race, and age) and level of positions within the corporation. However, this information was not found by the researchers or made available by the corporations. The researchers assured participants that corporations and their information sources would not be identified in the study. In respect to that promise of confidentiality, the corporations and their spokespersons will be referred to only in general terms.