Equal Access to the Top? Representative Bureaucracy and Politicians’ Recruitment Preferences for Top Administrative Staff

Abstract

Although a voluminous literature on representative bureaucracy and minority discrimination suggests that characteristics other than qualifications influence hiring decisions, little is known about whether this also pertains to the top positions in political-administrative organizations. To shed light on this question, we ask how candidate ethnicity, gender, and age affect the recruitment preferences among politicians regarding the candidates for top administrative positions. Our study uses a survey experiment with random assignment of 1,688 Flemish local politicians to one of eight different descriptions of applicants to the leading managerial position of their local authority. We find that ethnic minorities, women, and younger candidates are generally considered more qualified for the job. Moreover, the impact of ethnicity and gender on recruitment preferences is conditional on politicians' ideological predispositions: Left-wing politicians consider ethnic minority candidates more competent, whereas right-wing politicians consider them less representative and are less inclined to invite them for job interviews than candidates from the ethnic majority. Furthermore, politicians furthest to the left are more inclined than right-wing politicians to recognize women as representative of the public at large and support inviting them for job interviews.

Are Survey Experiments as Valid as Field Experiments in Management Research? An Empirical Comparison Using the Case of Ethnic Employment Discrimination

“…Second, using two different survey experimental designs in Studies 2 and 3, we found no and positive discrimination, respectively. While these conclusions are both theoretically and empirically improbable, they resemble those found in a recent survey experiment on hiring discrimination by Baekgaard and George (). Baekgaard and George () use a design that is in many ways similar to our Study 3: Both experiments were performed in February 2017 using an online survey sent to public sector staff, consider the hiring for administrative public sector positions and use similar names to represent ethnic majorities (e.g.…”

“…This procedure estimates that it is 10 times more likely than not that the effects from the two studies are the same (BF = 10.13). While Study 3 is by no means an exact replication of Baekgaard and George (), this comparison certainly suggests that our survey experiments are representative of studies being conducted in this field of research – not only in terms of design, but also in terms of the obtained results.…”

“…Baekgaard and George () ask Flemish local politicians how competent the applicant is on a scale from 0 to 10, and contrary to their expectations, they find that local politicians, on average, rate applicants with Arab sounding names 0.268 ( p = 0.005) points higher. By computing Bayarri and Mayoral's () equality‐of‐effect‐size Bayes factor we can compare the effect found in Baekgaard and George () directly to the one found in Study 3. This procedure estimates that it is 10 times more likely than not that the effects from the two studies are the same (BF = 10.13).…”

“…Recent empirical studies suggest that researchers believe that survey experiments constitute a capable design for studying organizational topics as discrimination and gender differences in management (Baekgaard and George, ; Baert and De Pauw, ; Brescoll, ). However, using survey experiment designs for topics such as discrimination implies that respondents' behavioural intentions are the same as their real behaviour.…”

Does Good Performance Reduce Bad Behavior? Antecedents of Ethnic Employment Discrimination in Public Organizations

“…Second, and relatedly, as argued by Riccucci and Van Ryzin (), studies of representative bureaucracy associate minority representation with more equal outcomes through a more inclusive work climate (Andrews and Ashworth ), less misconduct by street‐level bureaucrats (Hong ), higher willingness to coproduce (Riccucci, Van Ryzin, and Li ), and, in general, better citizen outcomes (Guul ). Finally, while there are relatively few studies of employment discrimination in the public sector (Leasher and Miller ), some recent studies indicate that ethnic minorities are also at a disadvantage when applying for jobs in the public sector (Carlsson and Rooth ; Villadsen and Wulff ; but see also Baekgaard and George ).…”