Employment Discrimination Law and Industrial Psychology: Social Science as Social Authority and the Co-Production of Law and Science

Abstract

This article combines Monahan and Walker's classification of social facts, social authority, and social frameworks with political-institutionalism's view of law and science as competing institutional logics to explain how, and with what consequences, employment discrimination law and industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology became coproduced. When social science is incorporated into enforcement of legislative law as social authority-rationale for judicial rule making-law's institutional logic of relying on precedent and reasoning by analogy ensures that social science will have ongoing influence on law's development. By helping set research agendas and providing new professional opportunities, institutionalized legal doctrine shapes social science knowledge. But because of differences in institutional logic, wherein legal cumulation is backward lookingwhereas scientific cumulation is forward looking, co-production of law and science may produce institutional mismatch between legal doctrine and scientific knowledge.

How Legal Intermediaries Facilitate or Inhibit Social Change

“…More recently, scholars have started to broaden the framework beyond managerialization and explore how other non-managerial logics influence the way that organizations understand the meaning of law and in particular, the role of intermediaries who are not legal professionals (Pélisse, 2014(Pélisse, , 2016. Consumer, risk, science and prison logics emanating in various organizational fields can influence the way that organizations understand the meaning of law (Stryker, Docka, & Wald 2012;Verma, 2015;Talesh, 2012Talesh, , 2014Talesh, , 2015a. Managerial logics can be in contestation with logics or work in complimentary ways (Talesh, 2015a).…”

“…The final section discusses the implications of our framework for studies of legal intermediaries and the relationship between law and social change. While normative, instrumental, political and cultural processes through which law produces social change remain important (Edelman, 2016;Dobbin, 2009, Stryker et al, 2012, our approach helps explain the underlying mechanisms that drive those different processes. In particular, political, cultural and institutional theories through which law is influenced are often derived from and influenced by the increasing professionalization of law by non-legal actors and how these non-legal actors encounter and filter what law means through non-legal logics.…”

Implicit Bias in Judicial Performance Evaluations: We Must Do Better Than This

“…To at least some degree, the development of the BARS technique was spurred on by the decisions of judges in employment discrimination cases (Stryker et al 2011). Courts, convinced by the testimony of plaintiffs' expert witnesses, have pushed for the replacement of the more subjective performance evaluations with objective appraisals based on behaviors or management objectives.…”

Brokerage Professions and Implementing Reform in an Age of Experts

“…However, unless all of these new tasks are claimed, reforms cannot be implemented. For example, to accomplish civil rights reform, industrial psychologists needed to work with business managers to change their screening and promotion practices (Dobbin 2009;Stryker, Docka-Filipek, and Wald 2012). To implement environmental reform, safety experts needed to work with scientists to change their research practices (Silbey et al 2009).…”