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We examine coworkers' procedural justice inferences about the accommodation of another employee when they believe it is for disabilityrelated reasons. Legal constraints that prevent the release of information about the accommodation process may lead to negative inferences about fairness. However, we argue that other factors can help to make inferences about procedural justice more positive. We present a model of the process through which coworkers engage in making inferences about the procedural justice of accommodating a coworker with a disability and the individual and organizational level factors likely to influence those inferences. Consequently, we present propositions to be studied in future empirical research and suggestions to managers who desire to reduce negative coworker reactions to accommodating individuals with disabilities. 4221 TAMU, k a s A&M University, College Station, TX, 778434221; AcoleUa@cgsb. tamu.edu. John Hollenbeck served as guest editor for this article.

In this paper, I develop a perspective on women’s career attainment focused on how employers’ salary offers may be constructed based on their assumptions regarding women’s access to comparative salary information. Therefore, although the use of social networks in job search may enhance women’s actual knowledge of prevailing wages, I hypothesize that institutional characteristics that employers could assume to constrain women’s networks and concomitant access to salary information will directly affect salary offers, as well as moderating the influence of network ties on pay. To test this perspective, job search outcomes of women attending elite coeducational and women’s colleges were examined. Regarding the number of offers obtained, women who consulted with proportionally more male peer and employed adult male advice ties received significantly more job offers than women using fewer male advice contacts. With regard to salary offers, this study reveals an institutional sex composition effect: women exiting single-sex institutions (i.e., women’s colleges) received significantly lower salary offers than women from coeducational schools, even after accounting for human capital, job characteristics, and institutional reputation. The effects of social networks on pay were moderated by institutional sex composition such that women exiting women’s colleges received lower returns in the form of salary to their cross-gender advice ties than did women from a matched coeducational institution. Implications of these results for theories of social capital and women’s occupational attainment are discussed.

Women lag men in their representation in management jobs, which negatively affects women’s careers and company performance. Using data from 81 publicly traded firms with more than 2,000 establishments, the authors examine the impact of two management structures that may influence gender diversity in management positions. The authors find no association between the presence of an HR executive on the top management team—a structure envisioned in practice as enhancing diversity but which could, instead, operate merely symbolically—and the proportion of women in management. By contrast, the authors show a strong, positive association between a previously unexamined measure of commitment to diversity—the hierarchical rank of the individual certifying the company’s required, confidential federal EEO-1 report—and women’s representation in management. These findings counter the common perception that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regulations are too weak to affect gender diversity. The authors discuss the implications for diversity scholarship, as well as for management practice and public policy.

Two studies examined how managers' pay decisions for male and female employees are affected by the opportunity to provide social accounts and how managers think about the value of accounts for men versus women. I theorized that managers would treat social accounts as substitutes for pay for women but not for men, paradoxically leading managers who could behave more procedurally fairly to create gender-based distributive injustice. Study 1 confirms this hypothesis. Practicing managers who learned before making pay decisions that they could provide a social account—here, an explanation of circumstances justifying low raises—paid women less than men and less than women for whom they could not provide this account. Also as hypothesized, when an account was available, experienced managers paid women less than did inexperienced managers. In addition to pay decisions, participants' explicit beliefs about the value of accounts as substitutes for pay (Study 1) and in motivating male and female employees (Study 2) were examined. When participants expected the account to make the employee feel that he or she had been treated with a high level of procedural fairness (Study 1), or the language of the account explicitly acknowledged and apologized for unfair treatment (Study 2), participants assumed that the account would be significantly more valuable for women than for men. This difference was greater for experienced participants than inexperienced ones. I discuss the implications of this “substitutability thesis” and these results for research on justice and gender as well as for achieving gender equity in the workplace.

This commentary discusses recent research on the attitudes of employees who are affected by affirmative action to determine if societal‐level beliefs about discrimination lead to policy endorsement among individuals whose career outcomes are at stake. It is suggested that policy exposure in the workplace leads to greater endorsement rather than a “backlash” against affirmative action. The mechanisms producing this effect are discussed.