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UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

Mandating change: The impact of court-ordered policy changes on managerial diversity (Hirsh & Cha, 2017)

Review Guidelines

Causal Evidence Guidelines

Absence of conflict of interest.

Citation

Hirsh, E., & Cha, Y. (2017). Mandating change: The impact of court-ordered policy changes on managerial diversity. ILR Review, 70(1), 42–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793916668880 [Court-Ordered Requirement to Inform Protected Classes of Employer Laws and Legal Settlements]

Highlights

  • The study’s objective was to examine the impact of court-ordered requirements to inform protected classes of employer laws and legal settlements 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:

  • The study used a nonexperimental design to estimate the impact of court-ordered requirements to inform protected classes of employer laws and legal settlements on the representation of white women, black women, and black men in managerial positions one year after the court settlement or verdict  Study authors also used data from a database on the settlements and verdicts of major employment discrimination lawsuits and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to analyze the impact of court-ordered requirements to inform protected classes of employer laws and legal settlements on changes in sex and race composition of managerial positions. 

  • The study found a significant relationship between court-ordered requirements to inform protected classes of employer laws and legal settlements and lower odds of white women being represented in managerial positions. 

  • This study receives a low causal evidence rating. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to court-ordered requirements to inform protected classes of employer laws and legal settlements; other factors are likely to have contributed. 

Intervention Examined

Court-Ordered Requirement to Inform Protected Classes of Employer Laws and Legal Settlements

Features of the Study

The authors did not provide details for each individual case that legally required workplace establishments to inform protected classes of employer laws and legal settlements; however, this policy requirement was summarized as an effort to raise awareness of employees' legal rights within organizations.  Protected classes in this context refer to employees that may face discrimination based on their identity, including characteristics such as race, sex, religion, national origin, and age.  

The study used a nonexperimental design to estimate the impact of court-ordered requirements to inform protected classes of employer laws and all legal settlement information 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 inform protected classes of employer laws and all legal settlement information 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 characteristics lawsuit and organizational 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 

  • The study found that court-ordered requirements to inform protected classes of employer laws and legal settlements were significantly related to lower odds of representation of white women in managerial positions. 

  • The study did not find a significant relationship between court-ordered requirements to inform protected classes of employer laws and legal settlements and the odds of representation of black women and black men in managerial positions.  

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 establishment to inform protected classes of employer laws and all legal settlement information. Additionally, the data sources used did not provide information on previous policies/outcome data of the establishments required to inform protected classes of employer laws and all legal settlement information prior to the court settlements or verdicts. Because of this, the authors were not able to appropriately control for the anticipation and associated affected behavior prior to the intervention.  

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 notice of employer laws and all legal settlement information. This means we are not confident that the estimated effects are attributable to court-mandated requirements to inform protected classes of employer laws and all legal settlement information; other factors are likely to have contributed. 

Reviewed by CLEAR

January 2023

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