Three Essays on Employer Decision Making, Workplace Inequality, and Organizational Attraction

Abstract

Racial and gender inequality in the workplace has many causes. On the supply side, factors like applicant pool diversity and differences in educational attainment, skills, and credentials contribute to racial and gender inequality. On the demand side, it can be influenced by individual decision-makers, organizations, and broader social forces. This dissertation focuses on how organizational practices can contribute to inequality. The first paper examines how workplace inclusion efforts inform organizational attraction. In a within-subjects experiment with a nationally representative sample (? = 500), only 42.6% chose the company with inclusion efforts; however, Black participants, Democrats (and Independents), and women were more likely to select workplaces with inclusion efforts than White participants, Republicans, and men, respectively. Using a quota sample (? = 598), I found evidence that all demographic subgroups, except White Republican women, preferred companies with inclusion efforts more than White Republican men did. The second paper asks how the design of hiring processes affects the racial composition of selected applicants. Drawing on a survey experiment with participants who have hiring experience (? = 1,265; 1,729 decisions), I found that neither collective nor simulated collective hiring contexts significantly increased the selection of Black applicants compared to an isolated context. However, Black applicants were 20% more likely to be selected in the simulated collective condition than in the collective condition. Additionally, Black participants and Democrats selected Black applicants at higher rates than White participants and Republicans. The third paper explores whether increasing clarity in reward allocation criteria can reduce gender inequality in bonuses and promotions. Using a survey experiment with participants who have management experience (? = 1,626; 8,130 bonus and 1,626 promotion decisions), I found that the ambiguous condition amplified disparities: women, but not men, allocated higher bonuses to women (by 7.69%) and were 5.6 percentage points more likely (equal to 28% of the expected baseline rate) than men to promote a woman. There was insufficient evidence of similar disparities in the clear condition. Combined, these three papers demonstrate how organizational practices can shape inequality in attracting, hiring, and rewarding employees, and how these effects vary across demographic groups.