Printed Program cover
Session Type: Paper Session
Program Session: 1138 | Submission: 20000 | Sponsor(s): (PNP)
Scheduled: Monday, Aug 13 2018 11:30AM - 1:00PM at Marriott Chicago Downtown - Magnificent Mile in Kansas City
 
Diversity and Representation in Public Organizations
Diversity and Representation
ResearchDiversity

View Map
Chair: Sanjay K Pandey, George Washington U.
PNP: Antecedents of ethnic employment discrimination in public organizations
Author: Thorbjørn Sejr Guul, Aarhus U.
Author: Anders Ryom Villadsen, Aarhus U.
Author: Jesper Wulff, Aarhus U.
  Carlo Masini Award for Innovative Scholarship in the Fields of Public and Nonprofit Management  
Integrating ethnic and racial minorities into the labor market is one of the grand challenges societies face today. In the public sector, this challenge may be especially important as research on representative bureaucracy shows that representation is associated with positive outcomes. We propose that organizational performance relates to an organization’s likelihood of engaging in employment discrimination. We argue that poor performing organizations tend to be less open to new ideas and that decision makers, in such organizations, are more prone to stereotyping behavior. We conduct a field experiment in which applications were sent to real job vacancies in 72 Danish public schools. We merge these data with administrative data on the schools. The results of Bayesian analyses show that minority applicants generally face discrimination but that they experience a higher callback rate from better performing schools than from poorer performing schools. We discuss implications for research on discrimination and public sector representativeness.  
Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
PNP: Racial Diversity and Task Performance
Author: Jaehee Jong, Northern Illinois U.
Previous studies on demographic diversity have yielded inconsistent results with respect to several individual and organizational outcomes. The current study proposes that structural characteristic will be beneficial to enhance the positive influence of racial diversity on employee outcomes. Specifically, this study examines the roles of formalization as a moderator and goal perception as a mediator on the effect of racial diversity on employee’s task performance. Using a sample of New York state employees from 42 state agencies, this study found that (1) in organizations where tasks are formalized, the effects of racial diversity on employee perception of goal specificity and goal difficulty were positive and (2) some of the interaction effect between racial diversity and formalization was in turn positively related to task performance through perception of the goal difficulty. Overall, while the results confirm the complex nature of diversity effects mentioned in previous research, they contribute further evidence on the effectiveness of racial diversity and provide evidence that some contextual environments in public organizations—e.g., formalization —are effective in demographically diverse workforces.
Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
PNP: The paradox of public bureaucracies:Discriminatory bureaucrats in non-discriminatory bureaucracies
Author: Lode De Waele, U. of Antwerp
Author: Kristina Sabrina Weißmüller, U. of Hamburg
Author: Arjen Van Witteloostuijn, Vrije U. Amsterdam
Bureaucracies are expected to treat customers equally and are assumed to attract people with a high Public Service Motivation (PSM). While PSM has positive effects on individual and organizational performance, a growing body of literature points out that PSM might also entail darker sides which so far have not been empirically scrutinized in detail. This article demonstrates the fundamental paradox of modern bureaucracies: People with high levels of PSM are especially vulnerable towards pro-social rule-breaking (PSRB) behavior which ultimately leads to discriminatory behavior threatening the very foundations of the bureaucratic principle. We test our theory by conducting an original vignette-based experiment replicated in three countries (Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands) with 1,239 observations in total. Our findings provide first behavioral evidence on the linear relationship between PSM and the likelihood of PSRB. Furthermore, results reveal that the relation between PSM and PSRB is moderated asymmetrically by client-based information cues: Negative cues have a larger negative effect than positive cues have a positive effect. This means that high-PSM people are not only more likely to engage in PSRB but that they also discriminate more sharply between clients that they perceive to be more deserving than their low-PSM peers. Furthermore, findings reveal that respondents abusing their discretion in this way were fully aware of the harming effect towards the organization while the benefit for the customer appeared to be a less significant motivation. In summary, this study provides evidence for a fundamental behavioral paradox at the core of modern bureaucracies and adds substantially to the literature on the dark sides of PSM, which are more diverse and have larger impact than anticipated so far.
Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
PNP: The Impact of Representative Hiring on Employee Perceptions and Discrimination Complaints Over Time (WITHDRAWN)
Author: Ashley M. Alteri, Tennessee State U., College of Business
Since 1978, the federal government has formally been implementing passive representation though initiatives like the Federal Equal Opportunity Recruitment Program. Despite this, the representative bureaucracy literature has done little to examine the impact these initiatives are having on the workplace. This project analyzes the impact of passive representation on employee perceptions that their department is open to diversity and intolerant of discrimination. In addition, the paper examines the relationship between changes in representation and the rates of race-, sex-, and age-based discrimination complaints filed. This paper uses a 5-year panel of data for 56 federal departments. The ratio of employees age 40 or older is associated with a change in employee perceptions that their department is open to diversity and intolerant of discrimination. In addition, the ratio of several racial categories each predicted a change in employee perceptions that their department is intolerant of discrimination. In the models examining discrimination complaints, the ratio of minority employees predicts an increase in the rate of race-, sex-, and age-based discrimination. However, neither the ratios of women nor employees age 40 or older predict changes in the rate of sex or age-based discrimination complaints.
Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
  
KEY TO SYMBOLS Teaching-oriented Teaching-oriented   Practice-oriented Practice-oriented   International-oriented International-oriented   Theme-oriented Theme-oriented   Research-oriented Research-oriented   Teaching-oriented Diversity-oriented
Selected as a Best Paper Selected as a Best Paper