Does Good Performance Reduce Bad Behavior? Antecedents of Ethnic Employment Discrimination in Public Organizations

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13094
• Date: 01 September 2019
• Published date: 01 September 2019

666 Public Administration Review • Septe mber | Oct ober 2 019

Jesper N. Wulff is assistant professor in

the Department of Economics and Business

Economics, Aarhus University. As an

applied statistician, he is mainly interested

in statistical myths and urban legends

in strategic management. He also works

with colleagues on statistical and machine

learning problems in finance, management,

and health. His research has been published

in journals such as

Organizational Research

Methods, Academy of Management

Discoveries,

and

Stata Journal

.

E-mail: jwulff@econ.au.dk

Anders R. Villadsen is professor in

the Department of Management at Aarhus

University, School of Business and Social

Sciences. His research interests include

employee diversity, sector differences, and

management and leadership in the public

sector. His research has been published in

journals such as

Academy of Management

Discoveries, Journal of Public Administration

Research and Theory,

and

Public

Administration Review

.

E-mail: avilladsen@mgmt.au.dk

Abstract: 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.

Evidence for Practice

• Public organizations are more likely to engage in employment discrimination against ethnic minorities

during periods of poor performance.

• During times of poor performance, managers rely on proven strategies and are more likely to be susceptible

to implicit biases.

• Evidence suggests that Danish schools performing even moderately above the national average performance

almost eliminate differential treatment of job applicants based on ethnicity.

• Employment discrimination is highly contextual, and organizational performance appears to be an

important predictor.

Thorbjørn Sejr Guul

Anders R. Villadsen

Jesper N. Wulff

Aarhus University

Thorbjørn Sejr Guul is assistant

professor in the Department of Political

Science, Aarhus University, and fellow at

TrygFonden’s Centre for Child Research.

His research focuses on representative

bureaucracy, discrimination, and coping

behavior of street-level bureaucrats. He has

published in journals such as the

Journal of

Public Administration Research and Theory

and

Public Administration Review

.

E-mail: tsg@ps.au.dk

Does Good Performance Reduce Bad Behavior? Antecedents

of Ethnic Employment Discrimination in Public

Organizations

Equality of treatment in the public sector has

been described as fundamental to American

notions of democracy (Gooden 2015) and a

key feature of modern bureaucracy (Weber 1947;

Lipsky 2010). A recent and growing literature studies

whether citizens experience equal treatment or

discrimination, particularly based on ethnicity or race

(Grohs, Adam, and Knill 2016; Jilke, Van Dooren,

and Rys 2018; Pedersen, Stritch, and Thuesen 2018).

The extent to which public organizations engage in

discrimination varies across studies. An obvious reason

for this might be that the extent of discrimination

varies with organizational characteristics (e.g., agency

type, as suggested by Battaglio and Hall [2018]).

However, the question of which organizational

features explain differences in discriminatory behavior

have largely been considered a “black box” in previous

studies (Gooden 2015). Therefore, we do not

know why these patterns occur or how to mitigate

discriminatory behavior (Gooden 2015).

This article focuses on sources of hiring

discrimination in the public sector, which is important

for several reasons. First, street-level bureaucrats

have considerable discretion to carry out their work

when interacting with citizens (Lipsky 2010). This

makes it difficult for public managers to manage

directly what street-level bureaucrats do when they

implement public policies (Lipsky 2010). Therefore,

one of the most crucial aspects of public management

might relate to hiring the best possible employees.

Second, and relatedly, as argued by Riccucci and Van

Ryzin (2017), studies of representative bureaucracy

associate minority representation with more equal

outcomes through a more inclusive work climate

(Andrews and Ashworth 2015), less misconduct

by street-level bureaucrats (Hong 2017), higher

willingness to coproduce (Riccucci, Van Ryzin, and

Li 2016), and, in general, better citizen outcomes

(Guul 2018). Finally, while there are relatively few

studies of employment discrimination in the public

sector (Leasher and Miller 2012), some recent

studies indicate that ethnic minorities are also at a

disadvantage when applying for jobs in the public

sector (Carlsson and Rooth 2007; Villadsen and Wulff

2018; but see also Baekgaard and George 2018).

Research Article

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 5, pp. 666–674. © 2019 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13094.