Racial Inequality in Employee Selections: The Effect of Employment and Diversity Practices

Abstract

Organizational practices have been shown to contribute to the reproduction of social inequality, i.e., unequal opportunities and outcomes based on social group membership. However, little is known about how organizations can effectively help overcome patterns of social inequality. We address this gap by integrating insights from the social inequality and the diversity literatures. We examine the relationship between organizational employment and diversity practices and selection decisions, which are primary gatekeeping mechanisms that enable or restrict access to organizational positions. We hypothesize that minorities are more likely to be selected through internal promotion than external hiring decisions and in organizations that foster inter-group interaction through mentoring. Moreover, we hypothesize that diversity managers moderate the relationship between employment practice and selection decisions. We test our hypotheses on a data set of more than 41,000 partner selection decisions in US Law Firms between 2007 and 2017. We contribute to the literature on social inequality in organizations by showing how different organizational employment practices affect access to elite positions and to the diversity practices literature by better explaining which practices can effectively help mitigate the negative consequences of stereotyping on access to elite positions for minorities.