Page 348 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

13. HRM PRACTICES
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expect that openness would be related to judgments of racism, sexism,
and reactions to affirmative action.
We have previously proposed the existence of a cosmopolitan personal­
ity profile (Doverspike, Arthur, Struchul et al., 2000), which is a combined
knowledge structure-personality profile that has the effect of making a
person more open to the acceptance of diversity programs, including affir­
mative action. That is, a person is more likely to be accepting of programs
such as affirmative action, which benefit cultural groups other than their
own, if the individual has both a culturally open personality profile and
sufficient experience with a variety of cultures so as to have had the op­
portunity to develop multicultural knowledge. In spite of its theoretical
and conceptual merit, it is questionable whether it would be practical to
use standard, straightforward self-report paper-and-pencil measures of
prejudice, racism, or openness in selection contexts because of the faka­
bility of such measures and their tendency to measure expressed instead
of genuine prejudice. Although there are alternatives to paper-and-pencil
measures such as reaction time (Fazio, 1990,1995) that indirectly measure
implicit cognitions and thus reveal suppressed prejudice and stereotypical
beliefs, Crandall and Eshleman (2003) note that they "are less sanguine
about the probability that implicit measures reflect unadulterated genuine
prejudice" and "suggest that genuine prejudice and implicit attitudes are
related, but they are not the same concept" (p. 435). It would also seem
more difficult to argue for the face validity of such reaction time measures.

HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
In this section, we consider discrimination-related issues in the context of
both training interventions and career development. We define training as
individual instructional activities designed to assist employees in acquir­
ing specific skills, behaviors, or attitudes. Career development is defined here
as set of activities aimed at general competencies designed to assist employ­
ees in progressing through a series of career stages. Despite their separate
definitions, it is often very difficult to distinguish between what consti­
tutes training and what constitutes career development and any attempt
to differentiate the two is likely to seem highly artificial. Therefore, we have
combined our discussion of these two methods under the single general
heading of training. As with the other HR functions discussed in this chap­
ter, conceptually, specific steps could be taken to reduce the negative effects
associated with human resource development-related decisions. In addi­
tion, one could also use human resource development to alter the behavior
of others in an attempt to reduce discriminatory behaviors.