Page 120 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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absenteeism, and job dissatisfaction, poor reputations with diverse cus­
tomers, and/or lower organizational adaptability (Wright, Ferris, Hiller, &
Kroll, 1995).
At the same time, there have been some genuine advances, where tradi­
tional monolithic (unicultural) organizations have been transformed into
more multicultural (Cox, 1994) environments. For instance, after Denny's
parent company, Advantica Restaurant Group, Inc., settled a racial dis­
crimination lawsuit for $54.4 million in 1994, they made organization-wide
changes toward increasing diversity. By 1998, the company was listed on
Fortune magazine's list of the best U.S. companies for Asians, African Amer­
icans, and Hispanics, and has remained near the top of that list since then
(Hickman, Tkaczyk, Florian, Stemple, & Vazquez, 2003). Similarly, Coca-
Cola made widespread changes immediately following the 2000 discrim­
ination settlement and has now also been named a top U.S. company for
racial minorities (Hickman et al., 2003). Although such rankings do not nec­
essarily reflect genuine cultural changes (Prasad, Mills, Elmes, & Prasad,
1997), the apparent success of these corporations in dealing with discrimi­
nation highlights several organizational-level factors that may predict dis­
crimination. These organizational-level antecedents to discrimination are
the focus of this chapter.
In what follows we present a systems model, summarized in Fig. 5.1,
of discrimination at the level of the organization. We elaborate on the
model shown in Fig. 5.1 and illustrate the ways in which aspects of
organizations—including formal and informal structure, organizational
culture, leadership, strategy, human resource systems, and organizational
climates—may contribute to or attenuate discrimination. As depicted
in Fig. 5.1 and as discussed in detail in previous chapters, the relation­
ship between these organizational-level processes and actual levels of
discrimination is necessarily mediated by individual cognitions and
interpersonal behaviors. Furthermore, we recognize that organizations do
not exist in a vacuum but rather they exchange resources and information
with the environment. To fully attend to the implications of this point, we
utilize an open-systems model of organizations (Katz & Kahn, 1978) to
briefly discuss inputs from the environment and organizational outputs to
the environment. Thus, we begin below with a brief overview of environ­
mental factors, such as the legal, economic, and social environment, which
serve as inputs into the organization that are relevant to the phenomenon
of discrimination. Then, the major section of the chapter is devoted to
a detailed analysis of the existing literature on discrimination at the
level of the organization. This exploration is accomplished through an
examination of six different organizational throughputs: organizational
structure, organizational culture, leadership, strategy, HR systems, and