Minimizing Workplace Gender and Racial Bias
workplace bias: differences in career outcomes by gender or race/ethnicity that are not attributable to the differences in skills, qualifications, interests, and preferences that individuals bring to the employment setting.
factors that typically generate and sustain gender and racial bias in modern organizations
policy implications for minimizing bias
Stereotypes in Institutional Context
Organizational Policy and Practice: Generating and Sustaining Bias
Cognitive Foundations of Bias: Gender and Racial Stereotypes
the decision-making contexts in laboratory settings have no history, and subjects rarely have any personal stake in the outcomes they generate
it is difficult to get people to attend to "individuating information", instead of relying on stereotypes about group differences
subjects made stereotypical judgments when they assumed that individuating information was present
individuals whose personal beliefs are relatively free of prejudice or bias are suscep- tible to stereotypes in the same ways as people who hold a personal animosity toward a specific group
stereotyping and in- group bias effects are probably substantially larger in the "real world" than they are in the laboratory
the consequences of skewed racial distributions for the social psychology of stereotyping and outgroup bias are similar to those resulting from gender imbalance, as are the resulting barriers to career advancement
personnel systems whose criteria for making decisions are arbitrary and subjective are highly vulnerable to bias due to the influence of stereotype
highly subjective personnel systems also reinforce the impact of segregated informal networks and personal ties in hiring and internal selection decision
more bureaucratic, rule-based, and seemingly objective personnel systems can also generate bias and produce highly segregated outcomes
organizational politics among competing constituencies can deflect and undermine the goals of bureaucratic systems designed explicitly to reduce workplace inequities
Organizational Policy and Practice: Formalized Approaches to Minimizing Bias
The Limits of Formal Approaches
Recommending these policies is not a call for a burdensome, "one size fits all," highly bureaucratized and centralized personnel system
the kinds of statistics compiled from the NOS and similar studies do not tell us the extent of substantive accountability in implementing written policies or the ease with which the policies can be routinely ignored
no mention of an explicit effort to assess systematically the impact of organizational policy and practice on career outcomes for women and people of color
the final ingredient in a policy to minimize workplace bias is what could be called "EEO accountability"
three components of EEO accountability:
to implement as part of an organization's human resource information system the regular monitoring and analysis of patterns of segregation and differences by gender and race in pay and career advancement
systematic analysis of feedback from employees about perceptions of barriers to and opportunities for career advancement
explicit evaluation of managers and supervisors on their contributions to an organization's EEO goals