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Does Good Performance Reduce Bad Behavior? Antecedents of Ethnic Employment Discrimination in Public Organizations
Author(s) -
Guul Thorbjørn Sejr,
Villadsen Anders R.,
Wulff Jesper N.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/puar.13094
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , ethnic group , callback , public relations , field (mathematics) , racism , ethnic discrimination , psychology , social psychology , political science , sociology , law , computer science , mathematics , politics , pure mathematics , programming language
Equal treatment is a key feature of modern bureaucracy. However, several studies have shown that public organizations discriminate against ethnic and racial minorities to different degrees. Which organizational features explain differences in discrimination is largely unknown. This article proposes that organizational performance relates to an organization's likelihood of engaging in employment discrimination and argues that poor‐performing organizations tend to be less open to new ideas and that decision makers in such organizations are more prone to stereotyping behavior. The study combines a field experiment in which applications were sent to real job vacancies in 71 Danish public schools with administrative data on the schools. Bayesian analyses show that minority applicants generally faced discrimination but that they experienced a higher callback rate from better‐performing schools than from poorer‐performing schools. Implications for practice and research are discussed .