Diversity structures can create illusions of fairness

Introduction

​​Most organizations use diversity structures including targeted recruitment and promotion, diversity training, committees, and managers to promote diversity and create a positive environment for underrepresented groups. These structures may, however, create a mere “illusion of fairness.” The authors conducted several experiments using four types of diversity structures across several forms of discrimination to test the following hypotheses: 

• Hypothesis 1: The mere presence of organizational diversity structures may cause high-status group members to perceive those organizations to be more procedurally fair despite evidence that underrepresented groups have been unfairly disadvantaged within these organizations.
• Hypothesis 2: The “illusion of fairness” results in high-status group members legitimizing the status quo by becoming less sensitive to discrimination.
• Hypothesis 3: The “illusion of fairness” results in high-status group members reacting more harshly towards underrepresented group members who assert discrimination.

Evidence suggests that organizations can use diversity structures to promote the appearance of egalitarianism without any evidence. For instance, an examination of over 1,000 federal civil rights legal decisions over 35 years found that judges used the mere presence of diversity structures as evidence of compliance with civil rights law, rarely questioning whether organizations actually provided protection or fairness. Moreover, the Supreme Court ruled that organizations could be absolved of discriminatory charges if the employee was aware of an organization’s diversity structures but did not use them. These findings and rulings are problematic in the absence of empirical evidence on the actual efficacy of these structures. A rare 30-year-long study of over 700 organizations found that some diversity structures were associated with decreased racial diversity because complying with diversity-related pressure can decrease support for diversity and increase prejudice. Since many organizations in the United States use diversity structures that are untested and ineffective in reducing bias and increasing diversity, this study is an important step towards examining their effectiveness in increasing diversity, promoting equity, or reducing bias.

Cheryl R. Kaiser is the Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. Ines Jurcevic, also at the University of Washington, serves as the Assistant Professor at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. Laura M. Brady is the Associate Research Scientist and the Executive Director of the Research for Indigenous Social Action and Equity (RISE) Center at the University of Michigan. Brenda Major is a Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara, Tessa L. Dover is the Assistant Professor of Applied Social Psychology at Portland State University, and Jenessa R. Shapiro is the Professor of Management and Organizations at the University of California Los Angeles. 

Methods and Findings

The experiments in this study ultimately suggest that the presence of diversity structures in an organization causes high-status group members to automatically assume that members of underrepresented groups are treated more fairly. The presumption of procedural fairness leads to the underestimation of discrimination and negative reactions towards those who claim discrimination. The methods and findings across each of the experiments are outlined below: 

Experiment 1 – Do Diversity Structures Create an Illusion of Fairness?

Methods: The experiment studies the impact of diversity structures on perceptions of fairness by inviting 245 white American participants to learn about a company by reading background information, the diversity or mission statement, and the company’s promotion demographics. Some participants read that minorities and whites received promotions and equal rates, while some read that white employees were promoted three times as often as minoritized employees. Participants also viewed a fabricated New York Times article describing a Black employee who sued the organization for plausible, but not certain racial discrimination. Next, participants completed a five-item survey asking about their perception of the company’s fairness toward minorities.

Results: The experiment provided support for the “illusion of fairness” hypothesis, finding that participants did not see unequal promotion practices as evidence that the company was unfair towards minorities. Instead, they assumed that employees may have had different qualifications that justified unequal promotion practices. This issue was addressed in the next experiment. 

Experiment 2 – Do Diversity Structures Lead White Men to Legitimize Sex Discrimination in Hiring? 

Methods: This experiment examined the implications of the “illusion of fairness” through sixty-six white men participants, who self-identified as high social status and did not associate themselves or their groups with the concept of diversity. Participants read background information on a company that required all managers to complete either a “Fostering Employee Success” or “Fostering Women’s Success” training. Participants then summarized the mission statement and examined applicants with distinctly female or distinctly male names for a client manager position. Data on applicants’ work experience and qualifications were also included and matched across sexes, so that for every male applicant, there was a female applicant with the same credentials. Participants were then shown a “short list” of applicants selected for interviews among which 70 percent of participants were male despite the equal credentials across sexes. After reviewing the short list, participants were surveyed on their support for women seeking judicial litigation to address discrimination and their overall perception of procedural justice for women. 

Results: Experiment 2 found that the presence of a gender-specific training program caused men to express less support for litigating what was objectively an unjust outcome for women. This study eliminated the effects of assumptions about varying levels of credentials from Experiment 1. 

Experiment 3 – Do Diversity Structures Cause White Men to Legitimize Sex Discrimination in Salaries 

Methods: Thirty-nine white male undergraduate students from the University of California, Santa Barbara between the ages of 18 and 23 were randomly assigned to read about a company that either had a diversity statement and training programs focused on women and minorities or a mission statement and generic diversity training. Next, they were asked to evaluate the company’s managerial promotion and pay practices by reviewing personnel information that indicated that women earned 81 percent of men at the same company holding tenure and qualifications to be constant. Participants then assessed procedural fairness and discerned if there was sex discrimination in the company. 

Results: Men who read that the company had a diversity statement and specific trainings rated the company to be more procedurally fair and were significantly less likely to say that sex discrimination occurred compared to men in the control group. 

Experiment 4 – Do Diversity Awards Cause White Men to Legitimize Sexism? 

Methods: Sixty-one white male participants read an excerpt adapted from a New York Times article describing a class action sex discrimination lawsuit against Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation for paying women less than men and denying promotions, especially women who became pregnant or had children. Participants in the control group were not made aware that the company was named one of the 100 best companies in the U.S. by Working Mother magazine, a credential influenced by internally-provided policies and data with minimal external validation. The participants were asked to indicate the extent to which the plaintiffs’ case was valid and their perceptions of  procedural justice for women. 

Results: The presence of a diversity structure caused these high-status group members to view the organization to be fairer and to perceive the plaintiff’s discrimination claim as less valid. Since participants read about an actual sex discrimination case, findings may characterize how people perceive and react to discrimination cases in everyday life. 

Experiment 5 – Do Diversity Policies Create Animosity Toward Discrimination Claimants? 

Methods: Participants were 150 white adults between 18 to 81 years of age and composed of 62 percent female and 38 percent male. Participants were randomly assigned to read about a company with either a mission or diversity statement. Next, they read a fabricated New York Times article describing a lawsuit against the company by a Black employee. Participants then reported their assessment of the plaintiff’s discrimination claim. 

Results: The presence of diversity structures led white individuals to regard minoritized employees’ discrimination claims as less valid. It also made them more likely to dislike and derogate a minoritized employee who brought discrimination claims.

Conclusions

This study demonstrated how individuals and organizations may use the presence of diversity structures as indicators of equity, even if these structures have not produced evidence of equitable outcomes. This research, therefore, encourages individuals and organizations to be vigilant of the “illusion of fairness” and use data to assess the efficacy of organizational practice. This research also emphasizes the need for legal institutions to recognize discrimination and not discount discrimination claims brought by underrepresented groups. 

Future research should examine these phenomena within actual organizations (e.g., corporations, social organizations) rather than hypothetical conditions and explore the role of the biases across different departments and specializations (e.g., human resource personnel) within an organization. Since the study relied on self-reported responses, future research should also explore whether perceptions observed in these experiments translate to actual behavior towards underrepresented groups who claim discrimination.

The study does not imply that diversity structures cannot be effective or that they should be eliminated. Instead, diversity structures are an important acknowledgement that discrimination and prejudice exist and should be alleviated by using evidence-based diversity structures to create a more just environment for underrepresented groups. 

Board diversity is critical to shape corporate equity practices

Introduction

While existing research has found that minoritized leaders are often associated with producing reduced inequality at their institutions, the impact of these leaders on organizational policies is understudied. This paper studies the impact of Black, Indigenous people of color CEOS and Board members on equity and diversity policies in Fortune 500 firms between 2001 and 2010. Authors Cook and Glass found that minoritized CEOs acting alone have a smaller impact on equity policies compared to BIPOC Board members, who play a more significant role in improving corporate equity and diversity, regardless of the race or ethnicity of the CEO. This research indicates that while promoting individual minoritized leaders is important, Board diversity can have a more meaningful impact on corporate policies. 

Black, Indigenous and leaders of color experience a breadth of professional barriers to entry, promotion, and mentorship, as examined in existing research literature. When promoted into leadership positions, minoritized are often in less visible and in less central positions, often excluded from high status and resource-rich networks, receive less mentorship and sponsorship from top leaders , and suffer from evaluation bias, and discrimination. They are also less likely to have cover in exercising authority in organizations, experience longer and more circuitous paths to leadership roles, experience weaker and slower wage growth. Although a growing number of firms have championed diversity efforts to address these issues and avoid legal action, growth in the number of both minoritized CEOs and members of corporate Boards at America’s largest firms has been slow. 

Dr. Alison Cook is an Associate Professor of management in the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Her research focuses on gender and racial/ethnic diversity in the workplace, specifically promotion opportunities for women and racial/ethnic minoritized groups in top leadership positions. Christy Glass is an associate professor of sociology at Utah State University where she studies employer practices and social inequalities. Her current research focuses on employer recruitment, hiring, and promotion practices and their impact on women and racial/ethnic minoritized groups.

Methods and Findings

Cook and Glass studied the impact of individual minoritized leaders as well as the impact of diverse leadership groups and Boards on an organization’s diversity-relevant outcomes including promotion of diverse individuals, supplier diversity, presence of work-life or balance policies, presence of LGBT support policies, and policies that promote the hiring of people with disabilities. Their hypothesis proposed: 

• Racial/ethnic minoritized CEOs will be positively associated with equitable policies and practices. 
• Board diversity will be positively associated with equitable policies and practices. 
• Firms with diverse Boards and minoritized CEOs will be more likely than other firms to implement  equitable policies and practices. 

The authors collected biographical information (i.e., name, race, age) on the CEOs and Board of Directors at Fortune 500 companies for each year between 2001 and 2010. If a racial or ethnic minoritized CEO also served on the Board, they were not included in the calculations of Board composition to avoid double-counting. The data indicated91 percent of the firms had a white CEO and only four percent had a racial or ethnic minoritized CEO. The remaining five percent of firms with no CEO racial/ethnic information available were excluded from this study, resulting in a sample size of 474 firms. 

The authors found that when controlling for the firm and year, having a racial/ethnic minoritized CEO had a small but significant relationship with supplier diversity and other indicators of equity and inclusion. However, having a racial/ethnic minoritized member on the Board of Directors produced more significant relationships with diversity-related policies and outcomes, including  supplier diversity. Finally, firms with both racially diverse Boards and minoritized CEOs were more likely to offer work-life benefits, promote diverse individuals, and offer LGBTQ-supportive policies. Interestingly, the interconnectedness of BIPOC Directors, quantified by the number of other corporate Boards they serve on, was also a significant predictor of the likelihood for a firm to implement more equitable policies.

Conclusions

Cook and Glass found that minoritized CEOS have a minor association with successful equity and diversity policies, without simultaneous racial diversity on the Board of Directors. The lack of racially diverse Board members leaves minoritized CEOs with limited support, resources, or ability to promote equitable policies. Although the study found weak evidence in support of the “Power of One” hypothesis, its data demonstrated stronger support for the “Power in Numbers” hypothesis. More racially diverse Boards are correlated with producing equity and diversity initiatives. Further, they can reduce bias and stereotyping behavior and policies among the leadership team by reducing the relevance of race/ethnicity in the group.  The presence of multiple BIPOC directors empowers BIPOC leaders to champion diversity initiatives without fear of increased scrutiny, negative evaluation bias, or stigma within the organization.

While additional scholars have expressed cynicism regarding corporate social responsibility and diversity efforts, this paper demonstrates that minoritized leaders can influence an organization’s formal policies to bring meaningful change to promote equity and diversity, when supported by their governance body. This research is especially critical because the number of racial/ethnic minoritized leaders in the Fortune 500 companies remains low. Cook and Glass believe that future research can build on the findings from this study. Given the small number of racial/ethnic minoritized CEOs in the Fortune 500, previous research has not studied the effect of different patterns of racial/ethnic composition on Boards and in leadership roles. Future research can examine the impact of gender differences on how minoritized men and women are able to drive organizational change.

The Effect of Community and Organization Diversity Climate on Employee Retention

Introduction

“Organizational diversity climate” describes the degree to which an organization’s racially and ethnically diverse members are treated equitably and inclusively. “Community diversity climate” expands this perception of collective equity and inclusion to a geographical area where the individual primarily resides (i.e., town, city). Existing research on organizational ethics and diversity climates has historically not considered the influence of community diversity climate on employee attitudes and behaviors. In this study, Singh and Selvarajan examine the effect of employee perceptions of community diversity climate, organizational diversity climate, and individual racial affiliation on employee intent to stay at an organization.

The authors investigate how diversity climates within the formal organization and broader community might impact employee retention through the lens of spillover and compensation theories. Spillover theory proposes that experiences in one part of our life influences individual behaviors in other parts of our. In comparison, compensation theory indicates that when individuals find something of value to be lacking or unattainable in one domain of their life, they turn to other domains of their life to fulfill that need. This study also examines the role of individual racial affiliations in employee intent to stay. By assessing the interactions between the diversity climate within an employee’s organization and community as well as individual racial affiliations, this study advances the existing management and community psychology literature that has traditionally evaluated these variables independently of one another.

Dr. Barjinder Singh is an Associate Professor of Management at Elon University focusing on organizational behavior, human resource management, and business ethics. Dr. Rajan Selvarajan is an Associate Professor of Management at California State University-East Bay researching  human resource management, employee engagement, and diversity in organizations.

Methods and Findings

The authors distributed an electronic survey to 500 employees at a mid-sized organization in the American Midwest and received responses from 165 employees. One hundred (61%) of these respondents were white while the remaining 65 belonged to racial minority groups. The average respondent age was 41 years, and the average tenure was 8.6 years. The majority of the respondents were male (72%) and married (66%). In the quantitative analyses, Singh and Selvarajan control for employee tenure, which is associated with intended retention. 

The study examined the following metrics: 

• Organizational diversity climate was assessed by asking survey respondents to use a four-item scale to react to statements such as “I trust this organization to treat me fairly” and “This organization maintains a diversity friendly work environment.”

• Employee intent to stay was quantified through a three-item scale that assessed individual intentions to stay with their current employer using statements such as ‘‘Under no circumstances I would voluntarily leave this organization,’’ and ‘‘I plan to stay in this organization for as long as possible.’’

• Community diversity climate was measured along a five-item community diversity climate index (CDI) that asked respondents to react to the following questions: ‘‘My community welcomes people of different races and ethnicities,’’ and ‘‘People of different races and ethnicities would want to move to my community.’’

The study found a positive relationship between a supportive organizational diversity climate and employee intent to stay, which the authors considered a proxy for retention. The authors also found a supportive organizational diversity climate was more positively related to intent to stay among individuals who perceive equity and inclusion challenges in their broader geographical area, therefore supporting the compensation theory. Contrastingly, employee intent to stay with their organization was not strong for those who perceived supportive equity and inclusion climates in their geographical area, contradicting spillover theory. Finally, the study also found that the relationship between an employee’s intent to stay and whether racially and ethnically diverse members are treated equitably and inclusively at their employer was stronger for minority employees, especially for those in adverse community diversity climates.

Conclusions

This research underscores the importance of organizational diversity climate for promoting retention among both white and non-white employees. Although the study did not find evidence supporting spillover effects of positive community diversity climate for employee intent to stay, it did indicate potential for supportive organizational climates to mitigate challenges associated with adverse community diversity climates. The study also calls attention to differences in the effects of organizational and community diversity climates based on individual racial affiliations.

The authors acknowledge that this study is limited to the lens of race and ethnicity, and propose that studying alternative forms of diversity could unveil new information about the relationship between organizational and community culture and work related attitudes and behaviors. Moreover, because the study exclusively utilized an electronic survey, common-method bias could have resulted in skewed results. To counter this possibility, the authors suggest that future researchers collect data from multiple sources. Finally, the cross-sectional design of the study prevented analysis of long-term effects, which could be addressed through future longitudinal studies.

Neighborhood racial and ethnic composition significantly affects the distribution of financial services

Introduction

Racial inequality research finds that the ecology of a city, or the spatial distribution of people and resources across neighborhoods, contributes to unequal life outcomes across communities. Living in a high-poverty and minority neighborhood influences one’s access to resources such as high-quality grocery stores, highly resourced schools, or conventional banks. As access to conventional banking systems is critical for upward mobility and financial welfare, the authors examine whether the relative scarcity of conventional banks in high-poverty and minority neighborhoods disadvantages certain racial, ethnic, and socio-economic groups by increasing reliance on often-predatory alternative financial institutions (AFIs). 

Small et al. differentiate this research by measuring conventional bank accessibility by the travel time to brick-and-mortar banks, relative to AFIs, across every block in 19 of the largest cities in the United States. Prior research on this topic has used zip code as a measure of accessibility, which does not account for barriers to access such as the ecological configuration of a space, public transportation challenges, or traffic. Prior research has also been limited to a few cities and has not compared the accessibility of AFIs and traditional banks. 

Dr. Mario L. Small, a Grafstein Family Professor at Harvard University, studies urban poverty and personal networks. He serves on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and the Sociological Research Association. In addition to a part-time faculty at Northeastern University, Armin Akhavan is city and regional planner, spatial analyst, and information design and visualization specialist. Mo Torres studies inequality and urban politics as a PhD candidate in Sociology, Stone PhD Scholar in the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy, and Democracy Doctoral Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance at Harvard University. Qi “Ryan” Wang is the Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University where his research focuses on urban and social resilience, urban computing, and geo-social networking.

Methods and Findings

Using more than six million queries, the authors compared travel times from the nearest brick-and-mortar bank to the travel time to AFIs in every block of the 19 largest cities in the United States. To account for traffic, congestion, and other factors that influence accessibility, the authors compared times by car, public transportation, and foot. The authors excluded data from ATMs located outside of banks such as grocery stores and liquor stores for two reasons: (i) ATMs require an individual to already have a bank account and card, and (ii) a stand-alone ATM outside a bank does not provide all financial services offered at a brick-and-mortar bank or AFI. 

In the 19 cities analyzed in the study, the number of banks exceeded the number of AFIs. The authors calculated the probability that an AFI is more accessible than a bank for groups with varying racial and ethnic groups as well as class or poverty level compositions. The authors emphasize this analysis as descriptive and not causal. These analyses found that within racial groups, the probability that an AFI was closer than a bank was greater in neighborhoods with a low-income, unemployed, and low-education renter composition than in high-income, employed, and high-education homeowning neighborhoods. However, these analyses also revealed that the presence of AFIs in a geographic area increase with the proportion of a minority group in a neighborhood, regardless of the poverty levels in a neighborhood. 

In a statistical analysis of the extreme ends of the spectrums, the study finds that the probability that an AFI is closer than a conventional bank by foot, public transit, or car is still significantly higher in affluent, home-owning Black neighborhoods than in economically disadvantaged, white renter neighborhoods. This finding indicates that race is more important than class in predicting the distribution of financial services across neighborhoods. Further, the study also finds these differences are not driven by a lack of banks, but instead by an increased proportion of AFIs in minority neighborhoods.

Conclusions

This study builds on the extensive literature on the role of financial institutions in creating and perpetuating racial disparities in wealth. The authors believe that the existing extensive body of work on financial institutions, banking, redlining, and other structural conditions should guide future work on the spatial distribution of financial institutions to determine if these differences reflect inefficiencies in the market, or are also associated with racial and ethnic differences in preferences for banks or AFIs. Future research should also examine how decision-making related to banking and social inequality is influenced by trade-offs between the quality and proximity of financial institutions. 

Policy interventions should incentivize banks to meet the credit needs of all communities since the disparities were driven by the prevalence of AFIs in minority areas, rather than by the absence of banks in these areas. Banks should be encouraged to meet the needs of minority and low-income neighborhoods or restrict AFI locations so policymakers can assess the causal effect of such interventions.

Asian American Women face Intersectional Discrimination

Introduction

Dr. Mukkamala and Dr. Suyemoto study the intersectional experiences of Asian American women that result from intertwined systems of disadvantage across both race and gender. Originally coined by Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, the term ‘intersectionality’ offers “a prism to see the interactive effects of various forms of discrimination” (Crenshaw, 2018). The intersectional approach to this study recognizes the compounding and overlapping power structures that disenfranchise Asian American women because of their gender and race. Using Kimberlé Crenshaw’s intersectional lens, this study focuses on the gendered and racial discrimination experienced by Asian American women and in comparison with the discrimination faced by those who share some, but not all, aspects of these women’s identities.

Although prior literature speaks to racism against Asian Americans, including Asian American women, this research primarily focuses on intersectional discrimination unique to Asian American women. It highlights an intersectionality illustrating the ways in which Asian American women experience some kinds of discrimination shared by other Asian Americans, some kinds of discrimination from non-Asian Americans that are related to being both Asian American and women, and some kinds of discrimination from within the Asian American group that are related to cultured meanings of gender. This study also finds a dichotomy distinct to Asian American women that renders them hypervisible in contexts where they are exoticized but invisible and voiceless in other settings where their opinions and presence are largely ignored and excluded. The research on discrimination towards women, as well as that within families or ethnic groups also finds that “benevolent sexism” is commonly used to preserve gendered subordinance.

Dr. Shruti Mukkamala is a Senior Staff Psychologist at the University of California-Irvine. She received her Master of Science in Clinical Psychology from California State University-Fullerton and Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Dr. Karen L. Suyemoto is a Professor of Psychology and Asian American Studies and the Director of the Transnational Cultural and Community Studies graduate program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. In 2013, Dr. Suyemoto was recognized as a White House Champion of Change: Asian American Pacific Islander Women and also received the Asian American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Contributions Award.

Methods and Findings

Participants were self-identified monoracial Asian or Asian American women who had lived in the United States for at least 10 years. These women were recruited in three ways to promote diversity of occupations, locations, and ethnic groups: e-mail and listserv outreach to national Asian American organizations; email, listserv, and flyer outreach to local neighborhoods, businesses, and community organizations in California and the Northeast region of the U.S.; and snowball sampling through professors, researchers, students, and professionals involved with Asian American individuals and communities.

Researchers gathered their qualitative data through both standardized open-ended survey questions and in-depth inductive focus group interviews. Every response was first coded according to situation context (personal or professional) and then by the nature of the experience resulting in three categorical areas: racism against Asian Americans shared by Asian American women, Asian American women-specific experiences, and experiences from within the Asian American group or family.

● Non-gender based racism against Asian Americans: Participants reflected on their experiences with tokenization, culture-based discrimination, and invalidation of their experiences of discrimination. On one hand, participants reported having their academic performance and success attributed to their racial identity. On the other hand, they reported being perceived as criminals or bad drivers. They also shared having their ethnicity mislabeled, assumed, or mistaken. As one participant put it, “Asians are grouped together as one large entity, and our individual identities are lost.”

● Gendered racism or racialized sexism: Participants recalled being exoticized, fetishized, and sexually objectified because of their racial and gender identity. They also spoke of being perceived as submissive, passive, and incapable of leadership. One participant said that “people seem surprised that I have had many years of leadership experience and have worked with very challenging clients and situations.” Participants were also stereotypically assumed to work in low-level service jobs such as maids, service workers, or nail salons.

● Gender discrimination experiences within the Asian American family or ethnic group: Participants reported being subjected to familial expectations that they be restricted to traditional gender roles both at home and at work. For example, one participant said that “a lot more resources poured into my brother’s education than there were for mine.” While the study questions elicited fewer data points on this theme, the researchers recognize this as an opportunity for further research.

Conclusions

The results of this study clarify the intersectional discrimination experienced by Asian American women in their public, professional, and personal lives. Mukkamala and Suyemoto believe the categories identified in this study may provide a valuable empirical foundation for a future measure of this type of intersectional discrimination. This measure would support future research to examine the psychological impacts of discrimination and effective personal and professional intervention strategies.

This study also lays the foundation for further research on intersectionality, which could include sexual orientation, social class, ability status, and other socially constructed identities. Because this study elicited first-hand narratives, these descriptions can also be used to inform medical and psychological theory and practice to better support Asian-American women. Furthermore, this research can provide valuable guidance for organizational leaders seeking to create more inclusive environments. Ultimately, this research offers a new taxonomy and evidence base on the intersectional experiences that can be leveraged across various disciplines and identities.

IRR helps Study Discrimination in the Labor Market

Introduction

This study utilizes incentivized resume rating (IRR) to examine employer preferences for candidates graduating from an Ivy League university. The IRR model incentivizes employers to rate hypothetical candidate profiles by matching employers to real job seekers based on their reported preferences. Kessler, Low, and Sullivan find that employers highly value prestigious work experience during the summer before senior year and additional work experience during the summer before junior year. Using rating data, the authors detect employer preferences to be relatively stable across the distribution of candidate quality.

Although the study found no evidence that employers are less interested in female or minority candidates on average, they found evidence of employer discrimination against white women and minority men in STEM roles. Additionally, the research found evidence of lower returns to prestigious internships for all women and minorities. The authors suspect that this could be a result of employers expecting other firms to have a positive preference for diversity even if they do not display this preference themselves. This assumption results in distorted beliefs about aggregate preferences for diversity that hurt female and minority candidates in the job market. In other words, the mistaken notion that these candidates will surely get jobs because they are diverse means that each firm is less likely to hire them than would otherwise be the case.

Policy makers and economists have a vested interest in understanding employer preferences and the role of discrimination in the labor market. Correspondence audit studies, including resume audit studies, have been commonly used to research these topics. However, these audit studies’ use of deception raises questions about real-world validity if fake resumes systematically differ from real resumes. Additionally, many audit studies use call back rates (i.e., the rates at which employers call fake candidates) as a measure of employer interest, when call back rates are likely also a function of the employer’s expectation of a given candidate’s likelihood to accept. IRRs also have the advantage of avoiding deception, eliciting rich information about a single employer’s preferences across multiple resumes, and enabling researchers to randomize many candidate characteristics simultaneously.

Judd Kessler is an Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania researching public economics, behavioral economics, and market design. Corinne Low is an Assistant Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania studying development economics, experimental economics, and gender. Colin D. Sullivan is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Economics at Stanford University where he studies labor markets, organ markets, and other matching markets, with a focus on eliciting preferences through incentive design.

Methods and Findings

The authors use IRR to study the preferences of employers hiring graduating seniors through on-campus recruiting in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania’s Career Services office. As a part of the study design, employers were required to rate hypothetical candidates along a 10-point Likert scale on two dimensions: their interest in hiring the candidate and the likelihood that the candidate would accept a job offer if given one.

Through their partnership with the Career Services at the University of Pennsylvania, the authors recruited 72 employers during Fall 2016 and Spring 2017. Each employer rated interest and likelihood of acceptance for 40 unique, hypothetical resumes with randomly assigned demographic and human capital characteristics (e.g., GPA, major, work experience, skills). The study found that these employers’ value higher GPAs in addition to the prestige, quality, and quantity of summer work experience.

● The study did not find evidence of discrimination on average, which the authors believe may be caused by the highly specific employer and candidate pool engaging in on-campus recruiting at the University of Pennsylvania

● There was evidence of a large significant preference for white males over white females and minority males among employers looking to hire STEM candidates. This discrimination is likely a function of implicit bias because these differential preferences were significantly larger in the latter half of each block of ten resumes, indicating a potential role of reviewer fatigue in the magnitude of the bias.

● The researchers find negative interaction effects between race, gender, and internship prestige on employer interest, indicating that non-white and non-male candidates received less advantage from prestigious internships. This is potentially due to reviewer beliefs that other employer’s advantage diverse candidates, making a prestigious internship a weaker signal of quality for candidates from underrepresented groups.

Conclusions

This study provides proof of concept that IRR methodology can be used to understand labor market trends and employer preferences without the use of deception. Because IRR elicits richer preference information compared to binary callback decisions, it can also provide more insight into employer hiring preferences and beliefs regarding the likelihood of job acceptance. Because IRR enables access to employers that recruit proactively and are therefore inaccessible with resume audit measures, it also allows researchers to gather data on preferences from a new subject pool. Additionally, researchers using IRR can randomize many candidate characteristics independently and simultaneously, which helps explore how employers respond to interactions of candidate characteristics. Finally, IRR allows researchers to collect supplemental data about research subjects, which can be correlated with subject preference measures and enables researchers to better understand the pool of employers.

However, because the IRR method informs subjects that responses will be used in research, it can be vulnerable to experimenter demand effects. For this reason, IRR may be less well-equipped to identify explicit biases because we cannot guarantee that employers treat hypothetical resumes as they would real job candidates. However, as a measure of employer preference and implicit bias, IRR is a useful tool for future research.

Implicit Bias and Structural Change

Introduction

Although humans believe we can “control” our behavior, scientists report that we have conscious access to only 2% of our brains’ emotional and cognitive process. Ninety-eight percent of the human brain works without active thinking. This indicates that there is an inconsistency between our conscious attitudes and our behaviors. How can these scientific lessons help us better understand Americans’ attitudes and behaviors regarding race? 

powell and Godsil wrote this article (Sept/Oct 2011 P&R Issue) in response to an article “Does Unconscious Bias Matter?” written by researchers Ralph Richard Banks and Richard Thompson in the same issue. Authors john powell and Rachel Godsil call attention to the United States’ cognitive dissonance regarding race. Despite some racial progress, the US continues to be plagued by impediments that prevent the full inclusion of people of color. This includes persistent racial disparities in incarceration, wealth, and academic achievement as well as microaggressions in workplaces and schools. Individuals can find it difficult to recognize the structural and systemic barriers facing people of color and instead view the status of minoritized communities as a reflection of individual initiative. Narratives that focus blame for inequities on personal choices rather than on legal, economic and political systems are prevalent and persist in American society. powell and Godsil argue that recognition and understanding of unconscious bias that is formed and upheld by racist narratives should be integral in efforts to modify legal and policy structures to advance racial and social justice.

The authors view implicit bias research as an opportunity for an honest conversation on race in the United States, instead of an obstacle to progress, yet also assert its limitations. Implicit bias, a term coined by psychologists in 1995, refers to attitudes that unconsciously influence our understanding, actions, and decisions, making them difficult to control. The authors emphasize that the conversation on implicit bias and race must also be accompanied with policies that eliminate structural barriers. Otherwise, it would be naïve at best to assume that implicit bias research and training alone could move people to address systemic hurdles. 

An expert in civil rights and structural racism, john powell is Professor of Law, African American Studies, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He also serves as the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute, a research institute at UC Berkeley, and as a board member of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council. Rachel Godsil is a Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School and serves as the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Perception Institute. She works to identify the efficacy of interventions relating to implicit bias, racial anxiety, and stereotype threat.

Methods and Findings

While powell and Godsil recognize Banks and Ford as adept scholars who have written widely on racial justice, they disagree with the scholars’ stance on implicit bias. While Banks and Ford view research on implicit bias as an impediment to progress, powell and Godsil believe that insights from social psychologists on implicit bias can foster constructive dialogue on race and help to eradicate racial barriers. 

Humans create schemas, or cognitive frameworks, that help us organize and interpret information in our environment. Schemas can cause us to exclude crucial information and only focus on areas that reinforce our pre-existing beliefs and ideas, thereby contributing to stereotypes. One dimension of bias the authors in the article address is that our brains tag people as members of the “out-group” (or people who do not belong to a specific “in-group”), therefore resulting in bias. This insight can help us understand the salience of race in American society. Although people often reject the idea of having negative racial stereotypes against those in the “out-group,” data from political opinion surveys indicates that race continues to play a critical role in American society. Therefore, while individuals may believe they consciously reject racial stereotypes, the human brain schematizes people on the basis of race and therefore upholds implicit bias.

powell and Godsil argue that racial disparities are not merely a consequence of individual actions but instead embedded across institutions in society. Without understanding how race operates psychologically and recognizing the macro-level mechanisms that operate independently of the actions of individuals, one cannot successfully challenge structural racism. Since policy is designed by individuals who are influenced by implicit biases, public policies must target institutional structures, instead of merely focusing on individual racism. Further, because human behavior influences institutional recourse, the success of policies that target racial inequities in organizations depends on the active commitment and participation of individuals developing these policies.

Conclusions

As implicit bias is a result of pervasive stereotypes within society, broad societal change, not just individual change, is necessary to overcome biases and eliminate stereotypes. It is not sufficient to merely interact with individuals from identity groups different from your own. Instead, it is imperative to question negative images and stereotypes that contribute to problematic narratives about racial minorities to achieve sustained change. Despite our conscious selves working to avoid negative stereotypes, our unconscious minds are not easily manipulated and hold onto these positions. It is therefore critical to address structural barriers that not only disadvantage people of color but also reinforce harmful narratives. 

Individual racial attitudes contribute to larger structural “racialization,” defined by the authors as the set of practices, cultural norms, and institutional arrangements that reflect, create, and maintain racialized social outcomes. As long as humans are influenced by their implicit biases, inequalities will continue to persist. Yet, research indicates that people tend to make significant efforts to correct racial bias as soon as the potential for such bias is made clear. For example, when race is made explicitly relevant to jurors, white jurors tend to treat Black and white defendants identically. However, when race is not highlighted, white jurors tend to treat Black defendants more harshly. Therefore, implicit bias research has the potential to help us address and overcome structural inequalities that result from structural racialization. 

Implicit bias research also allows individuals to recognize inconsistencies between their “self-concept” and behavior, therefore unlocking a route to social progress. Self-concept refers to the self-constructed beliefs that people hold about themselves, and people’s desire to maintain these beliefs can result in changes in behavior. For example, the Implicit Association Test is one bias measurement tool that people have used to explore the limits of their self-concepts. Although the test cannot clearly discern the difference between implicit and deliberately hidden bias, the tool provides a window into understanding bias—and an opportunity to correct it.

Despite the feminization of teaching, white men hold most educational leadership roles

Introduction

Macias and Stephens use an intersectional lens to examine the role of race and gender in the treatment, pay, and leadership in education. Intersectionality, a term initially coined by professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, allows for analysis of the compounding, overlapping power structures that disenfranchise women of color. The authors found that women of color, particularly Latinas, experience multiple levels of systemic oppression resulting from intertwined systems of disadvantage. 

Latinas not only face structural barriers and microaggressions but are also the least compensated for their work. Specifically, Latinas barely make over half of what white men make compared to white women, who make 76% of their white male counterparts. Latinas interested in working in education face many obstacles: limited opportunities for college preparation in high school, few financial resources, lack of social capital, and low salaries compared to other disciplines. Despite the small population of Latinas serving in leadership roles, they experience racial prejudice and differential treatment. Although ignoring stereotypes, informal mentoring, and forming networks of support have helped Latinas overcome these barriers, roadblocks continue to be systemic and pervasive. 

Dr. Angela Macias is an Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies at California State University-Dominguez Hills. She previously served as a public-school teacher for ten years and researches student engagement and systemic barriers in education, specifically for Latinx populations. Sophia Stephens served as a graduate teaching assistant while she was at California State University-San Bernardino. 

Methods and Findings

Using an intersectional analytical framework in the literature review, the researchers call attention to the compounding effects of racial and gender barriers in the workplace. Research indicates that women are treated worse than their male counterparts in job treatment, salary, career advancement, and leadership opportunities. Women in management roles often have higher expectations of their female employees and feel a greater sense of competition with their female employees, despite being more likely to mentor other women. Racial minorities also experience prejudice not only in hiring practices but in salary and career advancement. While the demographics of public schools have become more racially diverse, educators’ demographics remain primarily white. Although the proportion of women in leadership roles has steadily increased by seven percent nationwide in the last three decades, Latinx administrators only make up four percent of the increase. Marginalized Latinx students often experience institutional abuse and lack knowledge, guidance, and support through the college application process, including preparation for standardized tests. Individuals who are both gender and racial minorities are placed at the intersection of these systems of oppression, therefore experience both gender- and race-based inequities.

Conclusions

Despite progress in education, institutional policies and processes impede the progress for women of color who face compounded discrimination at the intersection of gender and race. One may think that token hiring to increase educators’ diversity would improve the working environment for women of color in education. However, the authors caution against token hiring to meet diversity quotas since more women and minorities in education and leadership do not alleviate inequities. Instead, organizations must address the oppressive structures across recruitment, hiring, training, pay, leadership, and promotion to eliminate the systemic policies and practices that hurt marginalized individuals. 

The feminization of the field of education has created an unexpected power structure where leadership positions continue to be male-dominated despite the majority of educators being women. Among the few women leaders in education, women of color represent an even smaller minority as racial minorities continue to be underrepresented. With the promising increase in Latinas pursuing teaching careers, administrators should use an intersectional lens to improve gender and race inequities to reduce attrition in education. Educational leaders must be trained on intersectionality to ensure that solutions implemented to solve one inequity problem does not compound other underlying oppressions. Finally, educational leadership programs should embrace a social justice lens and curriculum to prepare school principals and leaders to address microaggressions and structural racism.

Complex intersectionality compounds workplace bullying for women of color

Living at the intersection of multiple systems of oppression makes Black women disproportionately vulnerable to workplace bullying in higher education.

Introduction

The article examines the impact of workplace bullying’ on the self-determination and career advancement of marginalized populations in education. Workplace bullying refers to persistent patterns of harmful, targeted mistreatment by individuals from the dominant culture that exploit position and power to physically or emotionally cause harm to those in marginalized positions. Originally coined by professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, the term intersectionality provides us with “a prism to see the interactive effects of various forms of discrimination” (Crenshaw, 2018). Research on intersectionality indicates the importance of considering the multiplicity of an individual’s identities in recognizing the compounding, overlapping power structures that work to disenfranchise marginalized groups. 

Dr. Hollis’ research found that workplace bullying was compounded for individuals who held two or more marginalized identities that place them at the intersection of overlapping systems of privilege and oppression. Since prior research on workplace bullying comes from Northern European countries with relatively homogenous populations, this study examines the impact of workplace bullying in the American context, where social identity is a contributing factor in an individual’s propensity to experience workplace bullying.
Dr. Leah P. Hollis serves as an associate professor in the Department of Advanced Studies, Leadership & Policy at Morgan State University. Her 2012 book, Bully in the Ivory Tower: How Aggression and Incivility Erode American Higher Education, helped 125 colleges address incivility and bullying on campus. Her research focuses on healthy workplaces and issues relating to at-risk students and college athletics.

Methods and Findings

The author acknowledges the methodological challenges associated with studying intersectionality. Therefore, Hollis uses quantitative research to explore how the myriad of identities held by women of color increase their likelihood for workplace bullying and vicarious workplace bullying. Vicarious bullying refers to an action where the bully uses a subordinate to abuse and harass a third-party. This form of bullying allows the bully to be viewed as a nice and empathetic person despite orchestrating harm. 

The study used national survey data from 669 faculty and staff from four-year and two-year schools mentioned in the Higher Education Publications, a directory of higher education professionals. Using a chi-square test, the author examined the prevalence of bullying for individuals whose social identity makes them vulnerable to multiple overlapping systems of oppression. Although two recent studies in the field reported a small decline in workplace bullying trends, Hollis found it to be a persistent problem, with 58% of participants in the study reporting workplace bullying. The study further dissected the results by race, religion, and gender/sexual identity to assess the role of overlapping systems of oppression in hurting Black women’s chances in the workplace. The study found that as an individual’s intersectionality of identity becomes more complex, their likelihood of experiencing both workplace bullying, as well as vicarious workplace bullying, proportionately increases. Open-ended responses to the questionnaire pointed to the hierarchies of power in the workplace and its impact on making women of color more susceptible to workplace bullying. In particular, Black women often face unfair demotion, threats of job loss, or forced job changes to escape a bully. These events cause physical and mental trauma, and hurt career prospects for Black women.

Conclusions

Dr. Hollis recommends that human resource professionals in higher education conduct annual policy audits. These audits should ensure higher education institutions are not merely espousing fairness in opportunity, pay, and promotion in their mission statements but that these values are implemented uniformly across the organization. Further, the author advocates that the institutional office overseeing academic programs and departments encourages the inclusion of social justice in the curriculum. Finally, colleges and universities should appoint an ombudsman, an official trained in diversity management, who would hear the academic community’s concerns and investigate complaints against maladministration. 

Existing research on employee rights, discrimination, and harassment does not use an intersectional lens to examine the power structures that create a disenfranchised experience for marginalized individuals. This article urges policymakers and human resource professionals, to recognize the complexities within the population. Individuals designing and implementing policies must analyze the multiple identities embodied by an individual concurrently, instead of dissecting their identities into specific categories. This more complete and sophisticated analysis would better reflect how policies are experienced by individuals living at the intersection of different forms of discrimination.

Harmful Effects of Diversity Training

Introduction

Corporations and higher education institutions have been offering diversity training for decades. Yet countless studies dating back to the 1930s indicate that anti-bias training does not reduce bias, alter behavior, or improve the workplace. Despite these shortfalls, organizations continue to rely on diversity training due to concerns relating to optics, litigation, and perceived lack of commitment to address structural racism. This study calls attention to the ample evidence that short-term diversity training alone cannot lead to sustained and long-term improvements to attitudes and behaviors, especially towards women and minoritized populations. Instead, diversity and anti-bias curriculum offered over a longer period, such as  through a college course, has resulted in reductions in measured bias.  

This article by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev identifies reasons for the failure of diversity programs and remedies that address problematic features of training. The authors also present evidence that training is most effective as part of broader, systemic efforts to address bias and discrimination. Further, the study finds that even if employers design a diversity course that reduces bias, the intervention may not lower workplace discrimination. This is because intercepting unconscious bias does not decrease discrimination, since discrimination is a result of learned behavior or organizational practices. Organizations must view training as part of larger diversity initiatives that address both implicit biases and structural discrimination. 

Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev are professors of sociology at Harvard University and Tel Aviv University, respectively. Dobbin’s field of study includes organizations, inequality, economic behavior, and public policy. Kalev’s work focuses on gender, racial and ethnic diversity in the workplace, and organizational restructuring. Dobbin and Kalev collaborated to develop an evidence-based approach to diversity management that has been published in The New York Times, CNN, and National Public Radio, among other platforms. 

Methods and Findings

Dobbin and Kalev conducted a literature review to understand why diversity and anti-bias training do not lead to sustained improvements in bias and discrimination. The authors find that short-term interventions, such as diversity training, do not change attitudes and behaviors that have been learned over a lifetime of media exposure and real-world experience. Instead, anti-bias training can be counterproductive by making stereotypes more prominent and thereby reinforcing them. Further, training and anti-discrimination programs often results in organizations and individuals developing unrealistic confidence and becoming complacent about their own biases. This can result in employees not taking responsibility for discrimination and becoming blinded to hard evidence of discrimination. Research also finds that training often makes white individuals feel excluded and therefore reduces their support for diversity. For example, white people may exhibit hostility and resistance during training regardless of whether the trainer uses a message of multiculturalism or color-blindness. In addition, diversity training is less effective when it requires mandatory participation and emphasizes legal curriculum, as this can make participants feel a loss of power. For example, white participants who participated in diversity training in one experiment resented the loss of autonomy and external pressure to control their prejudice, thereby compounding white participants’ bias. 

The authors offered key lessons to organizations. First, organizations must acknowledge that when people do something good (e.g., attend diversity training) they are likely to feel permitted to do something bad afterward (e.g., discriminate in hiring). For example, when experimenters described subjects’ employers as non-discriminatory, subjects did not censor their own biases.  By recognizing this tendency,  organizations can prevent managers from becoming complacent and believing that the organization has addressed discrimination through training. Second, organizations should frame diversity training as being inclusive of the majority culture; this can help to ensure the majority responds more positively and is more willing  to support multiculturalism. Third, organizations should ensure that training is seen to be voluntarily chosen, not externally imposed. By mandating and imposing anti-bias training on employees, organizations tell employees that they need to change, which can lead to weakening their commitment to diversity.

Conclusions

The authors recommend that organizations view training as part of wider diversity programs, since diversity training has been found to be ineffective in isolation. Similar to health and safety training, diversity should be integrated into other workplace training. Additionally, organizations should develop long-term diversity initiatives that not only address implicit biases but also target structural discrimination. Dobbin and Kalev found that discrimination is a result of learned behavior or organizational practices, and therefore must be seen as distinct  from unconscious bias. While workplace programs may address unconscious bias, organizations will not lessen discrimination without making structural, systemic changes. 

Many corporations and higher education institutions are faced with the same challenge of increasing diversity in executive and faculty ranks. Research from social science can help organizations identify successful strategies from ineffective initiatives, and therefore allocate resources more effectively. For example, traditional human resources policies that aim to reduce discrimination and promote diversity can be  counterproductive when not incorporated into a suite of long-term organizational reforms. Formal hiring and promotion criteria, such as those in job tests and performance rating systems, may both limit managerial discrimination and  hinder diversity in leadership, depending on how the measures are structured. In addition, although diversity training can improve the effects of certain diversity programs, employers should complement training with the right programs. Initiatives such as special college recruitment programs, formal mentorship, diversity task forces, and management training programs have been found to be successful. These programs offer an opportunity for executive staff to connect with individuals from different identity groups (i.e., racial, ethnic, gender), empathize with minoritized populations, and become more adept at supporting systemic changes to enhance diversity.