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Insidious Procedures: Diversity Awards Legitimize Unfair Organizational Practices

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Abstract

Does the presence (versus absence) of an organizational diversity award increase the perceived fairness of biased personnel procedures? Participants examined fair or unfair personnel procedures at a company that had received a diversity award or an award unrelated to diversity. When the company had received a diversity award (versus a control award), participants perceived the unfair personnel procedure as fairer for minorities, and White participants were more supportive of enacting the biased procedure. These findings suggest that organizations perceived as successfully supporting diversity might be afforded particular legitimacy to enact policies and procedures that disadvantage the very groups they are perceived as valuing.

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Notes

  1. Excluding international students was an a priori decision, but including them in analyses does not change the pattern or significance of any of the reported results.

  2. In a pilot study, participants perceived unstandardized interviews (M = 3.20, SD = 1.03) as less fair to minorities than standardized interviews (M = 3.63, SD = .89), t(40) = 2.01, p = .05, d = .31.

  3. Although the present study focused on race, we included two exploratory items about fairness to women and fairness to men. Fairness to women showed similar results as fairness to racial minorities, and fairness to men showed similar results as fairness to Whites.

  4. We were unable to exclude to Whites and examine mediated moderation for the two-way interaction between interview fairness and diversity condition because the interaction was not significant for procedural support, F(1, 835) = 1.80, p = .18.

  5. As an initial examination of this possibility, we excluded non-Asian minorities from analyses to more directly compare White and Asian-Americans. For fairness to minorities, we replicated the interaction between diversity condition and interview fairness, F(1, 711) = 6.79, p = .009, where unfair procedures, F(1, 711) = 11.57, p = .001, but not fair procedures, F(1, 711) = .07, p = .79, were perceived as fairer to minorities in the presence of a diversity award. For procedural support, there was an interaction between diversity condition and race, F(1, 711) = 3.68, p = .055, where Whites, F(1, 711) = 4.56, p = .03, but not Asian-Americans, F(1, 711) = .53, p = .47, supported the procedures more when the company had a diversity award compared to a control award.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship awarded to Teri Kirby and National Science Foundation Grants 1053732 & 1052886 awarded collaboratively to Brenda Major and Cheryl Kaiser.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical standard

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Guthrie Hall, Box 351525, Seattle, WA, 98195-1525, USA

    Teri A. Kirby & Cheryl R. Kaiser

  2. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106-9660, USA

    Brenda Major

Authors
  1. Teri A. Kirby
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  2. Cheryl R. Kaiser
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  3. Brenda Major
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Teri A. Kirby or Cheryl R. Kaiser.

Additional information

We thank our research team, especially Florence Lau, for their assistance with data collection.

Appendix: Standardized and Unstandardized Interviewing Procedure Descriptions

Appendix: Standardized and Unstandardized Interviewing Procedure Descriptions

[Standardized (fair) interviewing procedure:]

Patterson Group is debating whether to conduct standardized interviews when interviewing job candidates, which involves asking candidates a standard set of pre-selected questions in the same order for each candidate.

Supporters of standardized interviews argue:

  • They allow the interviewers to get an accurate representation of each candidate independent of what interview questions are asked.

  • They result in treating all candidates similarly because all interviewers ask questions the same way.

[Unstandardized (unfair) interviewing procedure:]

Patterson Group is debating whether to conduct unstandardized interviews when interviewing job candidates, which gives the interviewer freedom as to what questions are asked. Questions can be included or excluded depending on the potential employee’s individual situation or responses to questions.

Supporters of unstandardized interviews argue:

  • They allow the interviewers to get an accurate representation of each candidate as questions can be created to address candidates’ unique attributes.

  • They result in treating all candidates as unique individuals because all interviewers ask questions that reflect the individual’s work history.

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Kirby, T.A., Kaiser, C.R. & Major, B. Insidious Procedures: Diversity Awards Legitimize Unfair Organizational Practices. Soc Just Res 28, 169–186 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-015-0240-z

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