This article focuses attention on research examining workplace discrimination against employees from marginalized groups. We particularly consider the experiences of seven different groups of marginalized individuals, some of which have legal protection and some of which do not but all of whom we feel have been overlooked by the field of industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology. We briefly describe the importance of studying each group and then delineate the brief amount of research that has been conducted. Finally, we make recommendations for I-O psychologists in terms of research and advocacy. Overall, we argue that I-O psychologists are missing an opportunity to be at the forefront of understanding and instigating changes that would result in maximizing the fairness and optimization of these often forgotten employees and their experiences in the workplace. One of the main goals of industrialorganizational (I-O) psychology is to ensure an equitable and fair workplace for all. Indeed, a large percentage of I-O psychologists devote their research programs and are hired to safeguard for fair selection Journal of Management, JOBU = Journal of Business and Psychology.
Except for some U.S. states and localities, gay men and lesbians are largely unprotected from employment discrimination. In debate over national legislation (Employment Non-Discrimination Act), some legislators have questioned the efficacy of antidiscrimination legislation. To address this issue, we conducted three studies. In Study 1, we documented public awareness of sexual orientation employment antidiscrimination laws by contacting 111 households in areas that do and do not offer city-wide protective laws. In Study 2, we examined the discrimination directed toward applicants who portrayed themselves as gay (lesbian) or nongay while applying for 295 retail jobs in neighboring cities with or without legislation. In Study 3, we conducted a lab experiment in which prior to interviewing a gay or lesbian confederate applicant for a management position, 229 participants were led to believe that their area either does or does not have sexual orientation antidiscrimination legislation. Our results, taken as a whole, reveal that public awareness of sexual orientation laws is heightened in communities with (vs. without) legislation (Study 1), that gay/lesbian applicants experience decreased discrimination when they have protective legislation (Study 2), and that reduced discrimination still occurs when legal awareness is randomly assigned and manipulated in a laboratory setting (Study 3). We discuss the theory behind these findings and aim to inform legislative debate with some of the first-known empirically based research estimates for the likely efficacy of pending national legislation (i.e., Employment Non-Discrimination Act).
Evidence from recent laboratory experiments suggests that ethnic identification can lead to negative evaluations of ethnic minorities (Kaiser & Pratt-Hyatt, 2009). The current research considers the generalizability of these findings to face-to-face interactions in contexts wherein impression management concerns are salient: the workplace hiring process. In a field experiment, Black, Hispanic, and Irish individuals applied for retail jobs with or without visible display of their ethnic identification. Analysis of indicators of formal (e.g., application offering, interview scheduling) and interpersonal discrimination (e.g., interaction length, nonverbal negativity) suggest store personnel interacting with other-race applicants exhibited greater positivity and longer interactions when applicants displayed ethnic identification than when they did not. The findings suggest that psychologists need to understand not only attitudes or intentions expressed in the lab, but also the behavioral consequences of manifest group identity as they unfold in natural environments.
Although previous research finds less perceived sexual orientation discrimination in areas with employment antidiscrimination legislation than in areas without such legislation, it remains unclear whether such findings hold for (a) quantitative hiring evaluations made by organizational decision makers and (b) privately held attitudes of prejudice. In a between-subjects design, human resource professionals in locales with or without sexual orientation antidiscrimination laws evaluated matched resumes of openly gay or presumably non-gay male applicants. Without antidiscrimination laws, gay applicants were rated as less hireable than non-gay applicants; with antidiscrimination laws, gay and non-gay applicants were rated equivalently. Further, antidiscrimination legislation was found to be related to decreased prejudice toward gay men, even after controlling for factors previously shown to impact community adoption of legislation (e.g., political and religious views). Analyses of hireability ratings lacked sufficient statistical power to discern this effect.
Western managers typically rate their performance higher than their bosses, peers, or subordinates do; research on Asian managers, however, has been both sparse and conflicting. In examining data from six Asian countries, Japanese managers were found to rate themselves lower than others in their organization do. This "modesty bias," however, varies considerably among Asian countries; in other countries, including India and China, self-inflation was more comparable to typical Western findings. Findings lend initial support to the ability of national collectivism to explain differences in modesty and leniency bias when institutional collectivism is distinguished from in-group collectivism using data from the GLOBE Project (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004). Theoretical basis for modesty bias, and implications for Asian and American expatriates are discussed.Western research consistently finds job performance self-ratings inflated relative to supervisor and peer ratings (a "leniency bias"). Harris and Schaubroeck's (1988) comprehensive meta-analysis found average self-ratings .70 standard deviations higher than supervisor ratings and .28 standard deviations higher than peer ratings (corrected). Thornton's (1980) qualitative review found a similar trend of leniency bias when self-ratings were compared to subordinate ratings.However, in 1991, Farh, Dobbins, and Cheng published findings of the reverse tendency (a "modesty bias"; self-boss: d = -.22) within a Taiwanese sample. No evidence that Taiwanese supervisors evaluated more leniently than their U.S. counterparts was found, suggesting a fundamental difference in employees' self-perception. In explanation, the authors broadly discussed contrasting Asian and American cultural values of individualism-collectivism, noting that leniency bias, as motivated by a need to view oneself as positively as possible, may be incongruent in "a collectivistic culture [where] individual achievement is often
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