Factors Affecting the Evaluation and Development of Minorities in Organizations.

Abstract

This paper focuses on potential sources of treatment discrimination in organizations. After establishing the existence of mean differences in the performance evaluations of minorities and majorities, several different explanations for these differences were explored. These explanations were arranged on a continuum of severity. The least severe explanation, managerial rating biases, suggests that the performance differences are not true differences but rather, result only from managerial stereotypes, attributions and judgments processes. The other two explanations are more severe since they are assumed to result in true performance differences between minority and majority group members. The first of these is what is called a 'lost opportunities effect' where, drawing upon the literature on tokenism, mentoring and ingroup/outgroup relationships, it is suggested that minorities may gradually develop lower levels of performance because they are given fewer opportunities to develop job-related skills. The final explanation for the observed evaluation differences is labeled self-limiting behavior, where minority group members may voluntarily limit their behavior and learning because of an expectation of failure. Potential remedies for dealing with these performance differences are discussed.

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