Exploring the paper Kaiser, C.R., Major, B., Jurcevic, I., Dover, T.L., Brady, L.M. and Shapiro, J.R., 2013. Presumed fair: ironic effects of organizational diversity structures. Journal of personality and social psychology, 104(3), p.504.
Blog three of five, in a series by Dr Chrissi McCarthy.
Kasiser et al set out with a very simple premise to test: that when organisational EDI policies exist, employees believe their organisations are fair, and are less likely to believe employees when they tell them they are facing discrimination.
We will examine the findings in blog 4. For now, we are going to consider the methodology used to test this.
Corrections
Note that when you open Kaiser et al.’s paper, you will see a correction notice. There was a data error that caused one of the results to be reported inaccurately in the first version. For some of you that might give you cause to abandon the paper entirely, I request that you pause before you do. When we do work, we are prone to error, and those who are good know that it is within the error that we find learning. If we are unable to see past mistakes when they are correctly reported and adjusted, we create a world where people hide their errors to protect themselves. The correction does not diminish the paper; it does, however, highlight the integrity of the authors.
Back to the methodology…..
Kaiser et al used an experiment to test their idea, which means they took people out of an organisational setting, to reduce other distractions, and put them in a “fake” situation that looked like something they might encounter in the workplace.
The experiments were conducted on 245 white American adults.
They put the participants into six groups
- Three groups were shown a company with a diversity statement
- The other three groups were shown a company without a diversity statement
- Then each group was split into three and shown a company where promotions were shown as fair, unfair or with no information.
Each group saw one fictional company with different data.
Then, a series of five experiments were conducted to see if the diversity policies created.
- An illusion of fairness
- Justification for sex discrimination in recruitment,
- Justification for sex discrimination in salaries
- Justification for sexism
- Animosity toward Discrimination Claimants
By using control groups who were not shown any diversity policies, the researchers were able to see if the respondents understood the influence policies had on people’s reactions.
We will look at the results in tomorrow’s blog. If you want to read ahead, please go straight to the source nd check out the paper here.
Approach review
So what do we think of the research approach? Experiments are helpful as they ensure that the people you are studying are not influenced by other factors within an organisation.
This means we can have a much better idea of the relationship between the things we want to understand better.
However, they only tell us how people react in an experimental environment. The thing here is that experimental environments are short-term and don’t hold the additional stress, strains, benefits, and joys of a real working environment.
This can mean we miss the bigger picture.
What if some of those stress, strains, benefits and joys override the responses that someone might have in an experiment?
What we can learn is that without additional factors, a particular finding can be seen; now we need to test that within organisations to see if another factor disrupts it.
The balance of the two approaches brings us closer to a useful truth.
