Using Information Regulation to Enhance Workplace Diversity, Inclusion, and Fairness

Abstract

In the U.S., traditional means of promoting improved employment practices – such as public regulation, union pressure, litigation, and long-term employment relationships – have weakened, increasing the power imbalance between employers and their workers and contributing to increased economic inequality in American society. Management theory and empirical evidence suggest that “information regulation” (IR) can significantly affect employer behaviour and contribute to countering these trends. This paper explores development of a large-scale “data utility” in which objective information on the employment practices and employment outcomes of individual employers are collected, curated, made accessible on-line, and actively marketed to a range of stakeholders. The goal is to muster information to empower these stakeholders – from individual workers and their advocates to employers’ key business partners – to reward good employer behaviour and sanction bad behaviour, thereby moving employers toward “high road” practices concerning, among other things, workplace diversity, inclusion, and fairness.