Sixty years of discrimination and diversity research in human resource management: A review with suggestions for future research directions

• Author: María del Carmen Triana,Pamela Gu,Orlando Richard,Olga Chapa,Adrienne Colella
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.22052

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Sixty years of discrimination and diversity research in human

resource management: A review with suggestions for future

research directions

María del Carmen Triana

1

| Pamela Gu

2

| Olga Chapa

3

| Orlando Richard

4

|

Adrienne Colella

5

1

Owen Graduate School of Management,

Organization Studies Area, Vanderbilt

University, Nashville, Tennessee

2

Department of Management and Human

Resources, University of Wisconsin-Madison,

Madison, Wisconsin

3

School of Business, University of Houston-

Victoria, Victoria, Texas

4

Isenberg School of Management, University

of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst,

Massachusetts

5

A.B. Freeman School of Business, Tulane

University, New Orleans, Louisiana

Correspondence

María del Carmen Triana, Owen Graduate

School of Management, Organization Studies

Area, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN.

Email: maria.triana@vanderbilt.edu

Abstract

This article reviews discrimination and diversity research published in Human

Resource Management (HRM) over the past 60 years. While discrimination and diver-

sity are very different constructs, it is often informative to study them together,

because when people recognize each other's diversity, this can result in bias,

stereotyping, and discrimination. We conducted bibliographic searches for terms

related to discrimination and diversity as well as a manual search through every title

and abstract published in HRM over the last 60 years to assess article relevance. The

search resulted in 135 research articles with 136 unique studies (i.e., samples) which

are reviewed in this article. Sex and race are the demographics that have been exam-

ined the most in HRM, while religion has been examined the least. Moreover, the

number of studies examining lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)

employees in the workplace in HRM has grown quickly within the past 10 years, cul-

minating in a recent meta-analysis. Our review looks at some of the earliest research

published, the most recent research published, and the overall trends we identified in

the research over the years for both discrimination and diversity articles. We then

make future research suggestions and recommendations to advance the study of dis-

crimination and diversity in the coming years.

KEYWORDS

ability, age, disability, discrimination, diversity, gender, LGBTQ, race, religion, review, sex

1|INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this article is to review discrimination and diversity

research published in Human Resource Management (HRM) over the

past 60 years. It is illuminating to review discrimination and diversity

jointly, because when people recognize each other's diversity through

the process of social categorization (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), biases are

often triggered, and this can result in discrimination. Moreover, diver-

sity management practices are often implemented in diverse work set-

tings as a means of preventing perceived or actual discrimination in

the workplace.

We begin our review of the literature by defining discrimination

and diversity and explaining why looking at these two constructs

together is worthwhile. Discrimination is defined as denying some

people equality of treatment based on their group membership

(Allport, 1954). Diversity is defined as the distribution of differences

among group members with respect to some attribute (Harrison &

Klein, 2007). Harrison and Klein (2007) explain that the construct of

diversity is often inadequately defined in organizational research and

is best conceptualized as three distinct types of diversity: diversity as

separation, diversity as variety, and diversity as disparity. Diversity as

separation focuses on differences within a group where individuals

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.22052

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differ in some value, belief, or attitude. This view of diversity as sepa-

ration often focuses on potential conflict and decreased performance

outcomes due to dissimilarity and results in a bimodal distribution of

group members when diversity is highest. Diversity as variety empha-

sizes a distribution of experiences and information that broadens a

group's repertoire, improving its ability to make effective decisions

and think creatively. A maximally diverse group regarding diversity as

variety is a group that has an even spread of group members across

different categories of some attribute. Finally, diversity as disparity

highlights the socially valued resources and assets group members

have and how inequality in the concentration of these resources con-

tributes to within-group differences. A group with high diversity as

disparity would reflect a situation where only some group members

hold the vast majority of the socially valued resources. As we will note

in the diversity section of this review, much of the diversity research

in Human Resource Management conceptualizes diversity as either

diversity as separation or diversity as disparity.

One clear observation in our review of discrimination and diver-

sity literature in HRM is that the earlier articles tend to focus on dis-

crimination while the more recent articles still study discrimination

but also have a heavy emphasis on diversity and inclusion. Since the

Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were passed,

the areas of sex/gender and race/ethnicity have received much atten-

tion. Indeed, the most frequently studied characteristic in HRM has

been sex/gender, with 60 research articles having at least a partial

focus on sex/gender. The second most often studied characteristic

was race, with 27 articles in the race and ethnicity category.

With respect to discrimination in organizations, it is striking to

see how some things have greatly improved while other things have

remained nearly the same since the 1960s, as the recent

#BlackLivesMatter movement has brought attention to. One notice-

able improvement was in the language used to refer to Blacks, or

African-Americans, over time. For example, the use of language

deemed offensive today disappeared from the literature by the late

1960s after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. Northrup (1964)

and Purcell (1962), the oldest articles in our review and both per-

taining to the subject of fair employment practices during the time of

Jim Crow laws and racial segregation, use the word “Negro”which

seemed to be common at that time. That word was used again in

1966 (Blum & Schmidt, 1966), but has not been used in HRM since

then. These articles were published early during the journal's history

when the journal was named Management of Personnel Quarterly.

One fact that has changed little since the article written by

Northrup (1964) is the unemployment rate of Black compared to

White Americans. Northrup noted that the unemployment rate for

Black employees had been twice that of White employees since the

1950s. That rate is similar today. As of the first quarter of 2020,

White unemployment in the U.S. was 3.6%, while Black unemploy-

ment was 6.6% or 1.83 times that of White unemployment (Bureau of

Labor Statistics, 2020). In one of the more recent articles on racial and

ethnic background, Goldberg and Allen (2008) assess the content of

websites and how that content affects applicants' intentions to apply

for jobs. Results show that diversity statements on websites are more

positively associated with candidate engagement and intentions to

apply for the job for Black participants as opposed to White partici-

pants. The fact that the research conversation has shifted to ways of

being more inclusive and designing recruitment webpages to attract

diverse applicants is a sign of progress in firms and in human resource

management over the last 60 years.

Regarding sex/gender, studies in HRM also show slow and steady

progress made by women over the years. However, the progress has

not been as great as some researchers writing decades ago had hoped

for or predicted, which is also consistent with the problems the recent

#MeToo Movement has brought national attention

to. Raynolds (1987) is an interesting paper in that it made predictions

about what women's employment and participation in the upper ech-

elons would be in the year 2000. Specifically, the author predicted

that in the year 2000 women's earnings overall would be equal to

80% of men's earnings overall. The paper also referenced predictions

by a futurist that by 1998 10% of Fortune 500 firms would have

female CEOs. The prediction regarding women's wages overall relative

to men's overall wages was slightly optimistic, as women overall

earned about 77% of men overall in the year 2000 (Semega, Kollar,

Creamer, & Mohanty, 2019). Regarding the prediction about the num-

ber of women CEOs, that 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs would be women

by 1998, that prediction was overly optimistic, for as of the year 2020

(22 years after the date of the prediction) women currently compose

7.4% of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 firms (Hinchliffe, 2020). In one

of the most recent articles, Athanasopoulou, Moss-Cowan, Smets, and

Morris (2018) conducted in-depth interviews with 12 female CEOs

and 139 male CEOs of global firms. They found that women CEOs

embrace a form of leadership where both feminine and masculine

characteristics are displayed. The fact that this research was able to

access enough women CEOs for qualitative interviews and analysis is

a sign of the slow but steady gains women have made in reaching the

upper echelons of organizations over the last 60 years.

Bailyn (1992) describes the challenges of women in the workforce

in the U.S. compared to women in Britain and Sweden, such as the

notion that families and children are part of the private domain versus

the public domain (i.e., workforce) and that women are responsible for

child care and eldercare. Bailyn concludes that attempts to equalize

the gender roles in society were most evident in Sweden compared to

Britain and especially compared to the U.S. Further, in an individualis-

tic, achieving society, it is difficult to have work-life balance because

society values work achievement over personal life. The same con-

cerns are echoed in a much more recent study by Chang, Chin, and

Ye (2014) based in South Korea, where the authors showed that

working mothers had lower career expectations than their peers,

which included single women, married women without children, and

male peers both with and without children at all levels of occupations.

Moreover, working mothers showed higher levels of work–family con-

flict than their peers at the associate manager level.

Of the remaining characteristics, all received substantially less

attention than sex and race. Sexual orientation and gender identity

represent 12 of the studies published in HRM over the past 60 years,

while age represents 11 studies, ability represents seven studies,

146 TRIANA ET AL.

national origin represents four studies, and religion represents only

one study, making religion the most under-studied protected cate-

gory. Of these, the research on sexual orientation and gender identity

is the most recent, with the first two articles having a publication date

of 2008 (Day & Greene, 2008; Huffman, Watrous-Rodriguez, &

King, 2008) and an increasing number of articles being published in

this area over time, with several articles published in the year 2018

(Lim, Trau, & Foo, 2018; Pichler, Blazovich, Cook, Huston, &

Strawser, 2018; Webster, Adams, Maranto, Sawyer, &

Thoroughgood, 2018). The initial articles presented a case for sexual

orientation diversity management in organizations and more research

on this topic (Day & Greene, 2008). A more recent article published

by Webster et al. (2018), 10 years later, is a meta-analysis about

workplace contextual supports for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-

gender (LGBT) employees, demonstrating the growth of this area,

such that a meta-analysis was possible. Moreover, we anticipate fur-

ther growth of studies in the area of sexual orientation and gender

identity, and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer

(LGBTQ) employees. The need is real both throughout the world and

particularly in the United States, now that the Supreme Court ruled in

June of 2020 that sexual orientation and gender identity are covered

under the “sex”protected category language included in Title VII of

the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Bostock v. Clayton County, 2020).

In the pages that follow, we present a comprehensive review of

research on discrimination and diversity published in HRM over the

last 60 years, and we organize the research according to category

(e.g., gender, race, age, LGBTQ, ability). We first review the HRM

research on discrimination, followed by the research on diversity, and

we review the articles in roughly chronological order. We then pro-

vide future research directions for the study of discrimination and

diversity in the area of human resource management.

In order to conduct the review, we searched every article publi-

shed in HRM which contained the phrases “divers*”or “discrim*”in

the abstract, with the asterisk (*) serving as a wildcard for the data-

base search which will find any combination of letters from that point

forward (e.g., diverse, diversity, diversify, discrimination, discriminated,

discriminating). We conducted different searches for specific terms

like “sex*,”“gender*,”“fem*,”“rac*,”and “age*.”

1

We also manually

read through every title of each paper published in HRM over the last

60 years to assess relevance and reviewed abstracts for the articles

that appeared relevant to determine whether they should be included

in this review.

The search resulted in 135 research articles with 136 unique

studies (i.e., samples) which are reviewed in this article. Two of the

authors coded article characteristics for each article included in this

review. The articles we reviewed utilize a wide range of theoretical

and methodological approaches. Several different kinds of articles on

discrimination and diversity have been published in HRM over the

past 60 years, such as 7 case studies, 34 conceptual articles, 89 empiri-

cal articles, 2 review articles, and 2 articles summarizing other impor-

tant workforce issues. Of the empirical studies, 27 were qualitative,

61 were quantitative, and only 1 recent article published by Ladge,

Humberd, and Eddleston (2018) used a mixed-methods approach with

qualitative and quantitative studies. Of the 61 quantitative empirical

studies, 21 of them presented moderators in the paper, while

17 papers presented mediators. A summary of the information coded

is described in Table 1. A complete table of characteristics coded in

Excel is available from the first author upon request.

2|DISCRIMINATION

According to Harrison and Klein (2007), discrimination is primarily a

result of diversity as disparity where group members differ in their

possession of socially valued resources and assets, causing inequality.

In 1964, the United States passed the landmark Civil Rights Act

prohibiting discrimination based on race, sex, religion, color, or

national origin. Importantly for human resource researchers, Title VII

of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination

based on race, sex, religion, color, or national origin (U.S. National

Archives, 2018). Historical events leading up to and following the pas-

sage of the landmark Civil Rights Act and the Equal Pay Act of 1963,

which prohibited wage discrepancies due to gender, spurred the start

of research on discrimination and diversity in the human resources lit-

erature. Following these historical events, early work in Human

Resource Management focused on reviewing the new legislation's

effect on labor-management relations (Harris, 1975; Pati &

Reilly, 1977; Slevin, 1973) and providing actionable guidelines for

implementing inclusion practices (e.g., Cohen, 1974; Higgins, 1977).

Since then, research in Human Resource Management has continued to

make important contributions toward understanding employees’

experiences with discrimination and the consequences of such dis-

criminatory disparities for employees across multiple dimensions of

identity.

2.1 |Gender discrimination

Following the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the movement of more

women into the workplace, much of the early work on gender within

Human Resource Management focused on describing workplace gender

discrimination and identifying differences between males and females

as distinct categories. This research also examined how disparities

between these distinct categories contribute to inequality in organiza-

tions. Researchers identified gender differences in perceived fit for

jobs that were stereotypically female versus male-oriented jobs

(Cohen, 1976), managerial beliefs on organizational legitimacy

(Bedeian & Armenakis, 1975), and representation in the media (Fox &

Renas, 1977). After these initial studies and as conceptualizations of

gender categories and stereotypical gender roles came into question,

research evolved to focus on the many more subtle ways gender dis-

crimination continued to affect women's workplace experience even

after the passage of the Equal Pay Act.

Despite the increased implementation of diversity management

practices in organizations over time (Richard et al., 2013a), women

continue to face discrimination in the hiring, pay, and performance

TRIANA ET AL.147