Page 386 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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Combating Organizational

Discrimination: Some Unintended
Consequences

Madeline E. Heilman
Michelle C. Haynes
New York University

As evidenced by the collection of work in this volume, discrimination on
the basis of group membership clearly has been and continues to be a press­
ing organizational issue. Many organizations have not turned a blind eye
to this problem and have implemented programs in an attempt to eliminate
harmful discriminatory practices from the workplace. These efforts have
taken numerous forms, varying not only in degree of formality, but also
in level of organizational implementation (from recruitment to selection
to promotions). Perhaps the most well known and hotly debated of these
programs is couched under the policy umbrella "affirmative action." Affir­
mative action is intended to rectify past discrimination and prevent current
discrimination. Nonetheless, there is a growing body of research that sug­
gests that affirmative action also can have deleterious consequences for
those targeted to benefit from it. This chapter explores this research and
examines these hidden potential costs of affirmative action—costs that
paradoxically may undermine its intended objectives.
The majority of the studies reported in this chapter focus on women ben­
eficiaries of affirmative action. Although we do not believe the processes we

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