'If they're being hired purely by their race as a proxy, that may cause some trouble,' says academic
After the controversy and media coverage around the George Floyd murder, along with a surge in anti-Asian rhetoric that accompanied the pandemic, many organizations heightened their focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
Of course, this meant the hiring of leaders to lead those initiatives.
But a new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business shows that many people have deeply held beliefs about who should be a DEI leader — and these beliefs are rooted in racial stereotypes.
“One of the reasons this came about was because there was a New York Times article, which was finding that people of colour were being asked to lead DEI initiatives without any experience,” says co-author and UBC Sauder assistant professor Rebecca Paluch.
“It seems so simple to think about qualifications and abilities [in hiring] but people in general really weren't looking at it when a lot of the rise of DEI happened a couple of years ago.”
Although there are benefits to seeing more non-white candidates represented in leadership positions, “if they're being hired purely by their race as a proxy, and not looking closely at the qualifications for the role, to do a good job in the role, then that may cause some trouble,” says co-author Vanessa Shum, assistant professor of business administration at California State University San Marcos.
3 studies look at perceptions around DEI roles
The study — running in the Journal of Applied Psychology — involved three studies and roughly 500 participants. For the first, people with hiring experience were given a press release announcing a new leader at a fictitious company, either as head of finance or head of DEI. They were then asked to identify the necessary traits for leaders in those positions and what they believed the race of the leader would be.
The researchers found that even though the leader had a generic name and description, people were significantly more likely to assume the finance leader was white, and the EDI leader was non-white.
In a second experiment, participants were asked about which traits they associated with different racial groups and leader roles. People assumed non-white individuals were more likely to be committed to social justice and to have experienced discrimination — and participants also viewed those traits as most critical for successful DEI leadership.
In the last study, the researchers found that hiring managers rated non-white candidates as having stronger leadership qualities for the DEI role and were more likely to recommend hiring them over white candidates.
‘Role theories’ and DEI leadership
The study also delves into the area of “role theories.”
Social role theory (SRT) argues that overrepresentation of a social group (such as groups based on race) in an occupational role causes people “to make inferences about inherent traits of the group as a whole, which ultimately leads to group stereotypes,” says the study.
Role congruity theory (RCT) extends this logic by proposing that congruity between an individual’s stereotypical traits and an occupational role puts them at an advantage when they’re being evaluated for the role.
“Taken together, we argue that observers expect DEI leaders to be non-white and that this association may have resulted from exposure to non-white individuals leading DEI initiatives over time,” say the researchers.
“Furthermore, exposure to non-white DEI leaders may have facilitated perceptions that members of non-white social groups inherently possess traits that are needed for success in DEI-focused roles. This stereotypical association is important as the congruity of traits can enhance observers’ evaluations of a non-white candidate’s potential in a DEI leader role.”
Generally, the mainstream of this has looked at how role theory has prevented women from entering certain roles, says Paluch.
“We think about women as being communal and nurturing and team players. And sometimes that makes people perceive that they won't be good in more agentic, dominant types of roles.”
One of the explanations for why we don't see more women in leadership roles is people have underlying biases that women don't have that agency and competence to be a leader, she says.
“The same applies with the race and the EDI leader roles. Some studies have found that for a traditional, general leader, it's assumed that a white person would be in that role because of some of these underlying characteristics, which is why this study is so interesting — we have a general knowledge base that people perceive a white person should be the leader, and now we're finding this particular role where our theory and our understanding doesn't hold.”
They really drew on social role theory to better understand where these associations come from, says Shum, “and how these kinds of stereotypes form over time and they become so strongly held.
“So we refer to social role theory to help us understand that, over time, people see in social roles in society, doesn't have to be work roles… disproportionately, some people take on more roles than others. And social roles theory is more applied to gender roles in society, women taking on more nurturing type of roles. So less has been done with this theory and looking at racial roles. So we're applying this theory in a new area as well.”
Social justice and discrimination as part of leadership roles
The overall results were surprising for a couple of reasons, according to Paluch.
“We had an inclination that there would be some racial bias or racial preconceptions of what an EDI leader should look like. But the strength of just how strong perceptions were was quite surprising.”
The practical implication from the study is showing — through consistent, strong evidence — that race is the factor that is used to determine when people consider who should fill a DEI role and be an effective leader, says Shum.
“Automatically, they choose a non-white candidate, for their race.”
It’s also notable that people felt a commitment to social justice and experience with past discrimination were important for a DEI leader, says Paluch.
“The problem is we're assuming that a white person doesn't have those qualities. We have ways that people can be marginalized or discriminated against, and so having that assumption based purely on race would be inaccurate and may exclude somebody from the role who would be quite good at it.”
In digging deeper into what exactly is the characteristic or the trait important to a DEI leader, says Shum, “the race is kind of being a proxy for people to perceive that candidates who are non-white, they should have suffered discrimination, and they should have higher commitment to social justice, compared to candidates who are white. So it's like a stereotype that they should hold more of these characteristics than a white candidate.”
Encouragingly, by giving non-white candidates the opportunity to lead, it’s “giving them exposure to other leaders in the organization and giving them those jump-in challenges to really increase their ability to lead,” says Paluch.
However, the idea that this could also create even more grouping, bias and marginalization “is definitely a concern,” she says.
“I would say it's also particularly concerning considering we are seeing organizations scale back a little bit on DEI — the DEI wave has reduced and they're looking for ways to cut costs.”
Takeaways for HR in hiring leaders
The results have obvious implication for the hiring of leadership – both for DEI roles and otherwise.
“This is what's really important is bias in any type of selection process or assumptions about who should lead based purely on demographics is always going to be a problem. It should be based on qualifications, knowledge skills and abilities. So when it becomes about appearances, it can be problematic for a variety of reasons,” says Paluch.
One way to combat this is through blinded selection, she says.
“At the very early stages, at least, [it’s about] not paying attention or trying to discount any types of demographic features and looking more specifically at qualifications and experience to ensure that the person leading DEI has the right skills and abilities.”
With any type of selection process, acknowledging that bias exists in the system is key, says Paluch.
“This is a step in acknowledging in that there could be bias in the selection of a DEI leader, and then taking those steps to reduce the bias.”
The study’s results are really strong in showing the implicit biases and stereotypes that people have, says Shum, which can translate into hiring DEI leaders.
“[It’s about] being aware that these biases exists; and then if they're hiring for a DEI leader role, it's important to focus on more reliable ways to measure the qualifications that they want in a candidate, not just look at race as a proxy for those qualifications.”
