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Racial Bias in the Manager-Employee Relationship: An Analysis of Quits, Dismissals, and Promotions at a Large Retail Firm

Year: 2011

Type: article

Abstract: Using data from a large U.S. retail firm, we examine how racial matches between managers and their employees affect rates of employee quits, dismissals and promotions.We exploit changes in management at hundreds of stores to estimate hazard models with store fixed effects that control for all unobserved differences across store locations.We find a general pattern of own-race bias across all outcomes in that employees usually have better outcomes when they are the same race as their manager.But we do find anomalies in this pattern, particularly when the manager-employee match violates traditional racial hierarchies (e.g.nonwhites managing whites).

Source: The Journal of Human Resources

DOI: 10.1353/jhr.2011.0022

Authors: Laura Giuliano, David I. Levine, Jonathan Leonard

Institutions: University of Miami, Florida International University, Cornell University, University of California, Berkeley

Language: English

Topic: Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Reduced inequalities, Decent work and economic growth

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: Sage Foundation