Support for affirmative action, justice perceptions, and work attitudes: a study of gender and racial-ethnic group differences.
Do gender and race-ethnicity moderate people's reactions to perceptions that their organization supports affirmative action/equal opportunity (AA/EO)? This study compared relationships between perceptions of support for AA/EO, distributive and procedural justice, career development opportunities, and work attitudes in 4 groups of federal employees: White men (n = 4,919), White women (n = 1,622), Blacks/Hispanics (n = 492), and Asians (n = 195). Surprisingly, White men did not associate support for AA/EO with a loss in career development opportunities, organizational injustice, or negative work attitudes. For women and racial-ethnic minorities, support for AA/EO was positively linked to perceptions of organizational justice and increased career development opportunities. As predicted, Blacks/Hispanics had more positive reactions than other employee groups. We conclude that support for AA/EO is generally viewed as fair and has positive attitudinal consequences.
Parker
C P
CP
Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb 60115, USA. cparker@niu.edu
Baltes
B B
BB
Christiansen
N D
ND
D000328:Adult; D002322:Career Mobility; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D008297:Male; D015279:Organizational Culture; D012935:Social Justice