Page 170 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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6. RACE COMPOSITION
they apply; rather, managers, despite their best intentions, often are pre­
sented with problems they cannot ignore and sometimes are required to
impose solutions they may see as dubious. Thus, to understand how the
race composition of organizations comes about requires one to look both
outside (in the environment) and inside (in the organization) the box. Tra­
ditional, discipline-bound research will not work.
What might the required research look like? To provide one answer to
this question, let us begin by returning to the place where Detroit and
Minneapolis were used as examples. It was claimed that the attitudes of
Whites in Detroit may be more negative toward Blacks than those of Whites
in Minneapolis, because the local Black population share is larger in Detroit
(81.6%) than in Minneapolis (18.0%). This claim was based on the idea that
sizeable minority populations increase White hostility toward minorities
as a result of competition among the groups. Following this line of thought,
one would hypothesize that Black population shares across cities are associ­
ated positively with the negative racial attitudes of White decision makers
in organizations embedded in those cities. For instance, one would expect
White organizational decision makers in Detroit to be more prejudiced than
those in Minneapolis. Also, based on arguments previously advanced, one
would hypothesize that this prejudice would be associated negatively with
the fair representation of Blacks in organizations. (One simply could not
study the number of Black employees, because, as Black population share
increases, the aggregate number of Black employees within an organiza­
tion would be expected to increase also.) Therefore, a more complete story
would go as follows: The negative association between Black population
share and the fair representation of Blacks in organizations is mediated
by the level of prejudice of White organizational decision makers. Rely­
ing once again on previously advanced arguments, this story easily could
be complicated further. It would be reasonable to hypothesize that the
negative relationship between the level of prejudice of White organiza­
tional decision makers and the fair representation of Blacks is moderated
by the degree to which an organization's formalized HRM systems are
race-conscious; the more race-conscious, the weaker the relationship.
Methodologically, what might be required to test these three hypothe­
ses? One would need a sample of cities that varied by Black population
share, at least one organization in each of those cities whose type (e.g.,
bank) is held constant, and a sample of White decision makers in each of
these organizations. One also would need to develop indicator(s), for in­
stance, of the "fair representation of Blacks in organizations" and to obtain
scores on a measure of prejudice from White organizational decision mak­
ers, which, practically speaking, is a daunting task (see, for example, James,
Brief, Dietz, & Cohen, 2001). Given the data needed, then come problems