Page 161 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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BRIEF, BUTZ, DE1TCH
Today, "race matching rules" have not disappeared from the manage­
ment literature. Using the same business logic as Shoney's CEO, however,
these rules are advanced by those advocating racial integration (e.g., Cox,
1993). The president of Avon Corporation, for example, concluded that his
company's inner-city markets became significantly more profitable when
additional Black and Hispanic customer contact personnel were placed in
them, because newly placed personnel were uniquely qualified to under­
stand certain aspects of the worldview of the minority populations in the
inner city (Cox & Blake, 1991). Brief (1998) contended that it is naive to be­
lieve that if an organization uses a matching rule to include Blacks, the use
of the same sort of rule to exclude Blacks will be precluded. Although the
staffing consequences of the two forms of the rule are different, they both
rest on the same business logic—race matching enhances organizational
effectiveness.
What do the sociology (and economics) literatures say about the verac­
ity of Brief's (1998) tale? Research shows the hiring of Blacks is lower in
those organizations with many White customers (e.g., Holzer, 1998; Holzer
& Ihlanfeldt, 1998). In the sociology literature, such results have been in­
terpreted as an organization's customers creating race-specific demands
for workers, especially in organizations in which employees interact with
customers (e.g., retail and service-sector firms; e.g., Mittman, 1992). These
demands result in an emphasis on personality and appearance as job quali­
fications, leading to the exclusion of Blacks from retail and service organi­
zations, particularly Black men (e.g., Moss & Tilly, 1996). So, it seems that
firms, in fact, do seek to match the race of their customer service personnel
to the race of their customers. It appears they may do so in the belief that
this is what their customers desire, but, actual motivation within the firm
for such discrimination remains an open empirical question.
What are the implications of race matching? To us, perhaps the most
serious is that Blacks, relative to Whites, will tend to populate the lowest
paying sales and service positions because these involve servicing those
customers with the least economic resources. According to the U.S. Bureau
of the Census (2000), 12.7% of Black households earned $75,000 or more
in 1999, whereas for Whites the percentage was 25.0; and, at the other end
of the continuum, 28.5% of Black households earned less than $15,000,
whereas for Whites the percentage was only 14.0. Thus, one would expect
Blacks to be represented more in the presumably lower paying customer
contact workforce of a discount store than they would be in the corre­
sponding workforce of an up-scale department store. In total, therefore,
markets for goods and services seem to matter for the race composition of
organizations, across industries (e.g., retailing versus manufacturing) and
within industry (e.g., up-scale versus discount retailing).