Page 169 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

BRIEF, BUTZ, DEITCH
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In attempting to understand the processes by which HRM influences
race composition, we hope researchers are intrigued by the importance
we have placed on goals. We, therefore, think it is worthwhile to fuel the
fire by speculating a bit more about race-conscious goals. Extrapolating
from Ely and Thomas's (2001) research on cultural diversity, we see the
rationale for race-conscious goals in organizations being framed in one
of three ways: (a) to eliminate unjust discrimination, (b) to gain access to
and legitimacy with minority markets and constituent groups, or (c) to
provide a resource for learning and adaptive change. These rationales, we
suspect, have long-term consequences for race composition, particularly
in regard to vertical integration. For instance, given the positive influence
on workgroup processes and outcomes Ely and Thomas (2001) observed
for the learning/ adaptive change perspective relative to the eliminate dis­
crimination and access/legitimacy perspectives, we speculate that a learn-
ing/adaptive change rationale for race-conscious goals is more likely to
yield a sustained effort to achieve racial diversity, resulting in people of
color fairly represented at all levels of an organization.
Again, we have argued that environmental forces influence the existence
of formalized HRM systems within organizations that, in turn, can affect
positively race composition. In this section, we largely have speculated how
and why those systems operate the way they do. Others relying on the same
literatures may be led to alternative, even contradictory, speculations. For
example, although some evidence noted above indicates that firms relying
primarily on interviews to screen applicants employ fewer Blacks than
those who do not (e.g., Moss & Tilley, 1995), the results of a meta-analysis of
31 studies in the applied psychology literature indicated that employment
interviews as a whole do not appear to adversely affect minorities nearly
as much as do ability tests (Huffcutt and Roth, 1998; but also see Roth, Van
Iddekinge, Huffcutt, Eidson, and Bobko, 2002). Based upon these meta-
analytic results, one might speculate that interviews in the selection process
are more likely to inhibit discrimination based on race than those primarily
relying on test results.

CONCLUSIONS

The take-home message of this chapter is a simple one that regrettably
often has been ignored by organizational psychologists: Organizations are
reflections of their environments. As we have shown in regards to matters
of race, environmental conditions can generate actions within organiza­
tions as well as constrain them. Managers, therefore, should not be viewed
as "free agents," able to choose the problems they tackle and the solutions