Page 167 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

BRIEF, BUTZ, DEITCH
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These business related justifications, like the one evoked by Shoney's CEO,
also may serve to release modern racists to act. This phenomenon has been
demonstrated experimentally. Brief et al. (2000) showed that the sorts of
business justifications we have identified produce a significant associa­
tion between scores on a measure of modern racism and discriminatory
behaviors and that this association is not present in conditions void of
such justifications. These results suggest that modern racists in organiza­
tional settings hold themselves in check unless supplied with a business
justification to discriminate. [For more on this subtle, new form of racism,
see, for example, Lambert, Cronen, Chasteen, and Lickel (1996); Monteith,
Deneen, and Tooman (1996); Schnake and Ruscher (1998); von Hippie,
Sekaquaptewa, and Vargas (1997); and Wittenbrink, Judd, and Park (1997).]
In this section, we focused on "negative" forms of prejudice leading
to discrimination and ignored "positive" forms and their consequences
(Brewer and Brown, 1998). Of the material we neglected, this troubles us
the most, for the consequences of "positive" prejudice likely are exceed­
ingly common. "Positive" prejudice, at least in the form of ingroup fa­
voritism, often entails according more positive outcomes to the members
of one's ingroup than to the members of some outgroup, without treat­
ing the outgroup members negatively. For more on this phenomenon, see
Brewer (1997).
In summary, negative racial stereotypes and racial prejudice imported
into organizations affect personnel decisions. The function of stereotypes
and prejudice in personnel decision making and subsequently, in the deter­
mination of the race composition of organizations, may be quite evident, for
example, among those relatively few individuals driven by blatant racism.
Alternatively, and we believe much more commonly, their role is consid­
erably less noticeable, characterized, for instance, as subtle and rationaliz­
able. The influence of stereotypes and this more subtle kind of prejudice
likely will be more difficult to track from the environment into organiza­
tions, but, a fuller understanding of the race composition of organizations
demands we give it a try.

The Role of HRM

The sociology literature tells us about the influence of environmental fac­
tors (e.g., the law and the vigor with which it is enforced) on HRM systems.
HRM researchers, on the other hand, have addressed the consequences
of such systems (or cluster of practices) for organizational effectiveness,
defined, for instance, in terms of turnover, productivity, and profitability
(e.g., Arthur, 1994; Huselid, 1995), not race composition. Moreover, based
upon Becker and Gerhart's (1996) observations of the HRM-organization