Managerial Perspectives on Implicit Bias, Affirmative Action, and Merit

Foley, Meraiah; Williamson, Sue

doi:10.1111/puar.12955

Cited by 42 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…However, the oral tests lead to evaluation biases aimed at compensating for the inequalities related to gender and place of birth encountered in written tests. This strategy of selection boards can help improve the diversity among the civil servants, but it may also be considered positive discrimination, which can stigmatize those who benefit from it (Coate and Loury ; Foley and Williamson ). Furthermore, biases in the oral tests operate to offset inequalities in the written tests at the group level only.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Competitive Examinations Promote Diversity in Civil Service?

Greenan

Lanfranchi

L’Horty

et al. 2019

Public Administration Review

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The representative bureaucracy literature provides a growing body of empirical evidence that a representative public workforce enhances the efficacy and legitimacy of public services. However, little attention has been paid to the capacity of civil service competitive examinations to give equal opportunity of access to public jobs to equally competent citizens. To fill this gap, the authors use French databases to analyze whether competitive examinations comprising both written and oral tests ensure equality of treatment for all candidates regardless of gender, place of residence, or place of birth. The results challenge the capacity of these examinations to treat candidates equally, identifying inequalities in the written tests as well as evaluation biases in the oral tests. However, oral evaluation biases tend to offset inequalities in the written tests. Therefore, selection boards take a sort of affirmative action toward the sole successful members of groups suffering such inequalities.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Competitive Examinations Promote Diversity in Civil Service?

Greenan

Lanfranchi

L’Horty

et al. 2019

Public Administration Review

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show abstract

“…The first body of literature focuses on identifying signs of inequities and emphasizes the role that legislative remedies play to correct discrimination and inequities in the workplace. Scholars in this group have examined the presence of the gender pay gap (see Alkadry, Bishu, and Ali 2019), experiences of sexual harassment (see Jackson and Newman 2004), the glass ceiling phenomenon (see Bowling et al 2006), circumstances in which women fall out of the system climbing up organizational ladders (Sabharwal 2015), and gender biases as drivers of inequity (Foley 2018).…”

Section: Unpacking Gender Inequities In the Workplacementioning

confidence: 99%

Equal Employment Opportunity: Women Bureaucrats in Male‐Dominated Professions

Bishu

Headley

2020

Public Administration Review

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The public sector prides itself on being a place where women and other marginalized groups can find shelter from workplace discrimination. Still, gender inequities are evident in the public sector workforce. In this article, interview data from city managers and police officers highlight the gendered internal organizational processes, arrangements, and interactions that impact women's experiences in male-dominated roles. Despite seemingly equal opportunities to access and engagement in these bureaucratic roles, the findings suggest that women constantly face gendered barriers and boundaries that directly impact their experiences on the job and their work-related outcomes. Legislative and administrative remedies are not sufficient to eliminate gendered experiences of women in maledominated roles. Rather, a cultural change from within the workplace is vital to realize the efforts of civil rights laws established more than 50 years ago. Evidence for Practice • Women in male-dominated roles in the public sector face covert barriers that have implications for their daily work experiences and subsequent job-related outcomes. • Gender inequities can be rooted and reproduced in organizational structures, processes, and the design of work. Thus, organizational commitment to conduct an internal inventory of places where inequities are reproduced is essential. • Gender analysis skills are an integral part of preparing the current and future public administration workforce to identify differential experiences and outcomes for women in public service.

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“…Despite diverging on the conceptual definition of AA, EEO and DM (and the relationships among them), there is a noteworthy commonality among authors supporting prior experiences with one or all the aforementioned initiatives [ 22 , 23 , 66 , 68 ] as anteceding general perceptions [ 33 , 67 , 69 , 70 , 71 ] and attitudes towards them. More importantly, by considering the different initiatives as intertwined and connected to each other, scholars also pointed out the misunderstanding regarding the boundaries between the three as well as a spillover on the purpose or effect of each of them [ 23 , 28 , 29 , 31 , 33 , 34 , 47 , 68 ].…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lastly, some authors agree that AA initiatives in management, such as the use of gender quotas, can be very controversial, with employees presenting opposite attitudes towards them [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 22 , 23 ]. Some may actively support the use of AA as a means of increasing women’s descriptive representation, while others are not supportive at all.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Affirmative Action and Management: A Systematic Literature Review on How Diversity and Inclusion Management Affect Gender Equity in Organizations

Furtado

Moreira

Mota

2021

Behavioral Sciences

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Gender affirmative action (AA) in management remains a controversial topic among scholars, practitioners, and employees. While some individuals may support the use of AA policies as a means of increasing representation of women, others are not supportive at all, further understanding gender AA as an unacceptable violation of merit—even when targeted by it. With the aim of analyzing how scholars have approached the subject, we systematically reviewed 76 published articles (SCOPUS database), covering the extant literature on gender AA and management. Findings indicate a consensus regarding the common antecedents of attitudes towards gender AA with prior experiences with AA and diversity management (DM) (as well as general perceptions of AA). Performance and satisfaction appear as the predominant outcomes. In addition, while investigating the differences among AA, equal employment opportunity (EEO) and diversity management (DM), scholars are mainly focused on the effectiveness of AA as a means of increasing the inclusion of minorities in general. We conclude that despite marginal studies on employees’ attitudes toward gender AA, there is a gap in the literature, particularly an absence of research on the bivalent position of meritocracy (or merit violation) as both an antecedent and outcome of attitudes towards AA, which deserves further scrutiny.

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Managerial Perspectives on Implicit Bias, Affirmative Action, and Merit

Cited by 42 publications

References 62 publications

Do Competitive Examinations Promote Diversity in Civil Service?

Do Competitive Examinations Promote Diversity in Civil Service?

Equal Employment Opportunity: Women Bureaucrats in Male‐Dominated Professions

Gender Affirmative Action and Management: A Systematic Literature Review on How Diversity and Inclusion Management Affect Gender Equity in Organizations

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