Page 407 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

HEILMAN AND HAYNES
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been linked to negative attitudes about affirmative action (Jacobson, 1985;
Tougas, Brown, Beaton, & Joly, 1995). Whether these differences in attitudes
toward affirmative action affect the perceptions of what affirmative action
entails and/or the perceptions of those thought to have benefited from it
has not been directly investigated. However, our findings indicating that
actual variations in affirmative action policies have an effect on how in­
dividuals ostensibly targeted by such policies are regarded suggest that
there is indeed a connection between attitudes toward affirmative action
programs and perceptions of its presumed beneficiaries.
Readers are reminded that the processes that we have illustrated
throughout this chapter are based on the widely shared assumption that
affirmative action is a policy that weights demographic group member­
ship far more heavily than qualifications in decision making. However, a
distinction must be made between actual organizational policies and the
perceptions of such policies. In fact, merit very often is the critical factor
used in decisions involving affirmative action, with demography playing a
far more minor role. This fact highlights two separate but related issues crit­
ical to averting the detrimental consequences of affirmative action efforts
on competence perceptions. First, affirmative action policies must have a
strong and well thought through merit component. This of course means
that there must be a clear sense of what constitutes merit—it may well
be broader than core task requirements, encompassing team performance,
organizational citizenship, and the like. Secondly management must be ex­
tremely careful in how it frames affirmative action policies. If there is a real
desire to prevent the stigma that accompanies association with affirmative
action, information that merit has been central in decision making must be
disseminated to those throughout the organization. It is only by directly
altering the perception of what affirmative action entails that the negative
consequences for its intended beneficiaries are likely to be precluded.
Finally, we want to make clear that it is not the position of the authors
that affirmative action is necessarily a bad thing. Certainly we concur with
its aims to increase the representation of women and minorities at all lev­
els of the organizational hierarchy and to ensure that discrimination on
the basis of demographic group membership be forever banished from
the organizational landscape. Moreover, we applaud the enormous ben­
efits affirmative action has wrought, both in work organizations and in
society more generally. However, we firmly believe that affirmative action,
as a policy, has unintended by-products that should be uncovered and
addressed. The findings presented throughout this chapter demonstrate
that a stigma of incompetence results from association with affirmative ac­
tion, whether this association is explicit or only inferred. Moreover, there
is evidence that these incompetence inferences prevail even in the face of