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

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Guul, Thorbjorn Sejr; Villadsen, Anders R.; Wulff, Jesper N.
• 署名单位: Aarhus University; Aarhus University; Aarhus University
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3352
• DOI: 10.1111/puar.13094
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 666-674
• 关键词: representative bureaucracy; diversity; PRIVATE; context; equity; IMPACT; RACE; INFORMATION; management; sector

摘要

Equal treatment is a key feature of modern bureaucracy. However, several studies have shown that public organizations discriminate against ethnic and racial minorities to different degrees. Which organizational features explain differences in discrimination is largely unknown. This article proposes that organizational performance relates to an organization's likelihood of engaging in employment discrimination and argues that poor-performing organizations tend to be less open to new ideas and that decision makers in such organizations are more prone to stereotyping behavior. The study combines a field experiment in which applications were sent to real job vacancies in 71 Danish public schools with administrative data on the schools. Bayesian analyses show that minority applicants generally faced discrimination but that they experienced a higher callback rate from better-performing schools than from poorer-performing schools. Implications for practice and research are discussed.