The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Structural Reform of the American Workplace

Are Diversity Programs Merely Ceremonial? Evidence-Free Institutionalization

“…Corporate leaders in the United States have reached broad consensus on how to achieve equality of opportunity. That consensus revolves around a set of employer policies and programs that are widespread among leading firms (Dobbin, 2009), inscribed in federal 'best practices' lists , and required by discrimination suit settlements negotiated by federal litigators and approved by federal judges (Schlanger and Kim, 2014). For the purposes of our argument -that employers could not have deliberately adopted ineffective diversity practices because they knew not which were effective -we trace the research on who was behind these innovations.…”

“…Thus one study shows that women in corporate management champion diversity practices that research has shown to be ineffective, such as diversity training, and neglect practices that typically work, such as mentoring (Dobbin et al, 2011;. Others find that in negotiating discrimination suit settlements, liberal federal litigators ask for ineffective diversity practices but not for effective practices (Hegewisch et al, 2011;Schlanger and Kim, 2014). If women managers and federal litigators advocating for change do not know which innovations work and which don't, neither, we suggest, do corporate policy-makers.…”

“…Some settlements include only monetary awards, but large class action settlements usually include program changes ('injunctive relief'), in the form of antidiscrimination initiatives. The most common programmatic changes are posted equal opportunity policy (86%), equal opportunity training (87%), written anti-discrimination policy (33%) and civil rights grievance system (32%) (Schlanger andKim, 2014: 1573). However, we show below that these initiatives have either no effect (true for policy posting and creation) or adverse effects (true for equal opportunity training and grievance system).…”

“…Early on, personnel managers built bureaucratic anti-discrimination practices, such as formal performance evaluations and civil rights grievance procedures, on the foundation of policies that unions championed to shield their leaders from retaliation (Baron and Bielby, 1980;Dobbin et al, 1993;Jacoby, 1984;Kochan et al, 1994). As noted, plaintiff attorneys in discrimination suits often ask for these practices in settlements (Edelman et al, 2011;Schlanger and Kim, 2014). And social scientists have argued that employers can 'reduce attribution errors by routinely collecting concrete performance data and implementing evaluation procedures [including performance ratings] in which evaluators rely exclusively on these data' (Reskin and McBrier, 2000: 235; see also Bielby, 2000).…”

Mapping the Iceberg: The Impact of Data Sources on the Study of District Courts

“…20 The proportion of cases falling in these four types of case outcome are plotted for each visibility level. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of EEOC district court cases are resolved through a negotiated outcome (Schlanger & Kim 2014:1568. However, the estimated proportion of settlements varies drastically based on the source consulted.…”