Can Customers Affect Racial Discrimination in Hiring?

Abstract

While significant scholarship has documented the prevalence of racial discrimination in hiring, less is known about the forces that exacerbate or mitigate it. In this article, we develop a theoretical argument about the ability of customers to influence racial discrimination in hiring, highlighting the role of direct customer communication and its intersection with online review systems. We deploy a novel method to test our argument. Specifically, we draw on original data from a two-part field experiment that first randomly assigned restaurants to receive one of three different email messages from customers and then audited the restaurants to test for racial discrimination in hiring. While our data collection effort was cut short and disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, making our findings more exploratory than initially anticipated, our data provide evidence that customer communication can reduce racial discrimination under certain conditions. We discuss the implications of these findings for scholarship on organizational decision-making, discrimination, and methodological approaches for studying these topics.

How Do Employer Practices Affect Economic Mobility?

“…Formalized job postings and publicized job ladders (which create more transparency about opportunities within a firm) are also promising, predicting greater racial and gender diversity in management positions (Dobbin et al 2015). Linking an organizational survey to a hiring audit, Pedulla and colleagues found less discrimination against Black applicants in organizations that have more formalized policies and procedures, administrative infrastructure (i.e., separate HR, legal, and equal opportunity departments), and networking and mentoring programs specifically for employees of color (Pedulla, Dias, Wullert, and Muñoz, n.d.). Formalization of downsizing disproportionately harms women and minorities when layoff rules rely on position tenure (Haveman, Broschak, and Cohen 2009), but not when layoff rules require individual evaluation (Kalev 2014).…”

“…For example, randomized assignment to a mentoring program increased women economists’ retention in academia and their odds of attaining tenure (Ginther, Currie, Blau, and Croson 2020). Additionally, a hiring audit paired with an organizational survey found that workplaces with race-specific networking and mentoring initiatives are less likely to discriminate against Black applicants (Pedulla et al, n.d.).…”

“…At the establishment level, mandatory diversity and harassment training focused on legal compliance has been associated with decreases in representation of workers of color in management positions, although it tends to be more effective in organizations that already have a higher proportion of women in management (Kalev et al 2006; Dobbin and Kalev 2019). Furthermore, organizations with diversity training are no less likely than those without to discriminate against Black workers in hiring—but also no more likely to do so (Pedulla et al, n.d.). Recent experiments do point to some plausible benefits from voluntary diversity training programs.…”

Engaging First Nations People at Work: The Influence of Culture and Context

“…Within organisations, the role of cultural norms in actively perpetuating inequality is well exemplified (Motapanyane and Shankar 2022). Research also reveals how organisational culture often hinders the promotion or service of disadvantaged groups (Martín Alcázar et al 2013;Amis et al 2020;Motapanyane and Shankar 2022;Muzio and Tomlinson 2012;Pedulla et al 2023;Pedulla and Thébaud 2015).…”