Absence of conflict of interest.
Citation
Highlights
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The study’s objective was to examine the impact of court-ordered diversity training on the representation of white women, black men, and black women employed in managerial positions. The authors investigated similar research questions for other interventions, the profiles of which can be found here:
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The study used a nonexperimental design to estimate the impact of diversity training on the representation of white women, black women, and black men in managerial positions one year after the court settlement or verdict. Study authors used data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and a database on the settlements and verdicts of major employment discrimination lawsuits to analyze the impact of court-ordered diversity training on changes in sex and race composition of managerial positions.
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The study found a significant relationship between court-mandated diversity training and higher odds of white women being represented in managerial positions.
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This study receives a low causal evidence rating. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to court-mandated diversity training; other factors are likely to have contributed.
Intervention Examined
Court-Ordered Diversity Training
Features of the Study
Diversity training and education policies are a popular method of reducing bias in the workplace, due to its ability to make decision makers aware of their conscious and unconscious biases. Although the authors did not provide details for each individual case that required the intervention, diversity training was summarized as social psychological research-based programs to reduce the sex and race biases of employees that allow for workplace discrimination to occur.
The study used a nonexperimental design to estimate the impact of court-mandated diversity training on the representation of white women, black women, and black men employed in managerial positions. Study authors used data from high-profile employment discrimination lawsuits settled from 1996 through 2008 that required the firm to implement diversity training in the court settlements or verdicts for each subsidiary establishment. The authors measured managerial diversity one year following the lawsuit settlement or verdict. In addition to controlling for unobservable characteristics, the statistical model controlled for several lawsuit and organizational characteristics such as monetary awards for plaintiffs, the number of plaintiffs and lawsuits that each firm faced, establishment size, firm size, the percent of white male managers, within-establishment labor supply and local labor market, and the year.
Findings
Employment
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The study found that court-mandated diversity training was significantly related to higher odds of representation of white women in manager positions.
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The study found no significant relationships between court-mandated diversity training and the odds of managerial representation for black women or black men.
Considerations for Interpreting the Findings
Given that high profile lawsuits and their resulting court-mandated policy requirements were public information, it is likely that employees within the sampled establishments anticipated the intervention. Additionally, the data sources used did not provide information on previous policies/outcome data of the establishments required to implement diversity trainings prior to the court settlements or verdicts. Because of this, the authors were not able to appropriately control for the anticipation of the court-mandated diversity training and associated affected behavior prior to the implementation.
Causal Evidence Rating
The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is low because the authors did not account for trends in outcomes prior to the participant’s anticipation of the court-mandated diversity trainings. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to court-mandated diversity training; other factors are likely to have contributed.