A supervisor like me: Race, representation, and the satisfaction and turnover decisions of public sector employees

Abstract

Studies of race representation in public organizations illustrate the importance of bureaucrat race in determining client-level outcomes. Building "upward" from this research, this study examines how supervisor race impacts outcomes for street-level bureaucrats using data from a nationally representative sample of public schools. Employing multiple estimation methods, we find that, consistent with the predictions of representation theory, teachers report higher job satisfaction and turn over less often when supervised by an own-race principal. We also find that race congruence impacts the tangible and intangible organizational benefits teachers receive, and, moreover, that race congruence impacts white and African American employees differently. Most troubling, we find evidence that black teachers earn substantially less in supplemental pay when they work for a white principal, even when compared to white teachers in the same school. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.Numerous public policies exist to overcome the historical disadvantageseconomic, educational, and otherwise-of minorities in the United States. Ultimately, the success of these policies depends on the ability of implementing organizations to serve the needs of minority clients. A rich literature shows that the representation of minorities within the bureaucracy, across a variety of agency settings, increases the ability of the bureaucracy to address minority client needs

Strategic Involuntary Teacher Transfers and Teacher Performance: Examining Equity and Efficiency

“…Model 1 includes only teacher characteristics. Model 2 adds principal characteristics, while, given recent research demonstrating the importance of relational demography for teacher labor market decisions (e.g., Grissom & Keiser, ), model 3 adds indicators for race and gender congruence between the teacher and principal.…”

The Individual‐Level Effect of Gender Matching in Representative Bureaucracy

“…In relation to quality, it has been argued that bureaucrats are better equipped to help citizens of their own social origin because they have a special understanding of that group (Lim , 196). Grissom and Keiser () cite Lang (), who suggests that such understanding is a consequence of better verbal and nonverbal communication between people with the same characteristics. Social identity theory suggests that the perception of belonging to the same group in opposition to an out‐group, such as the male/female distinction, may induce a more constructive interaction between bureaucrat and citizen and that these categorizations are triggered by the available data.…”

Exploring the Antecedents of the Gender Pay Gap in U.S. Higher Education

“…While most research on representation has focused on the employee–citizen relationship, scholars have also extended their work to the supervisor–employee relationship. They find that supervisors from disadvantaged groups advocate for employees in those same groups because of their empathy and shared values, while they remain impartial toward advantaged groups (Grissom and Keiser ; Grissom, Nicholson‐Crotty, and Keiser ). This argument is not limited to public organizations and also applies to private firms (King et al ).…”