Page 164 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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6. RACE COMPOSITION
loosely; it will be taken to include implicit choices and judgments, such as
letting the status quo stand. Organizational practices and policies, once
in place, become institutionalized and rarely change without substantial
pressure (e.g., Stinchcombe, 1965; Hannan & Freeman, 1984). This inertia,
often adversely affects the representation of minorities (e.g., Bielby, 2000;
Cohen, Broschak, & Haveman, 1998; Reskin, 1998). For instance, recruit­
ing through informal networks commonly is the status quo (e.g., Marsden,
1994; Miller & Rosenbaum, 1997) and tends to reproduce the existing, and
often segregated, organizational composition (Braddock & McPartland,
1987; Kalleberg, Knoke, Marsden, & Spaeth, 1996; Kasinitz & Rosenberg,
1996). (A segregated organization essentially can be composed of a race or
races separated horizontally, vertically, or both.)
In addition to such important implicit decisions as maintaining the
status quo, explicit HRM decisions, such as those regarding selection,
placement, and recruitment, can constitute significant barriers to racial
integration within organizations (e.g., Braddock & McPartland, 1987).
We begin below by examining how the decision processes that link the
environment to race composition may be influenced by stereotypes and
prejudice.

Stereotypes and Prejudice

Recall, negative stereotypes of Blacks and prejudice toward them princi­
pally were seen as arising from the environments in which organizations
are embedded rather than from the organizations themselves. Also re­
call that a distinction was made between negative stereotypes (cognitions)
and prejudice (an attitude; e.g., Mackie & Smith, 1998). Here, because of
the voluminous literature pertaining to each of these constructs and the
limited space available to us, the discussion that follows necessarily will
be somewhat superficial. For much more general and thorough treatments
of stereotypes and prejudice, see, for example, Brief (1998), Brewer and
Brown (1998), and Fiske (1998).
A stereotype is a set of beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of
people (e.g., Hilton & von Hippel, 1996). This set of beliefs is not necessarily
negative in nature; but, stereotypes of outgroups typically have more neg­
ative connotations than those of ingroups (e.g., Esses, Haddock, & Zanna,
1993). The cultural stereotypes of Blacks in America are decidedly negative,
containing the beliefs that they, for example, are lazy, ignorant, and dirty
(Stephan & Rosenfield, 1982). As argued earlier, knowledge or awareness
of this stereotype does not equal endorsement of or belief in it. That is,
we imagine most readers know that Blacks commonly are stereotyped as
lazy, but, we suspect that many who are aware of this do not personally