Discrimination in the hiring process – state of the art and implications for policymakers

• Date: 22 October 2024
• Pages: 103-121
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-10-2023-0340
• Published date: 22 October 2024
• Author: Cinzia Calluso,Maria Giovanna Devetag

Discrimination in the hiring

process – state of the art and

implications for policymakers

Cinzia Calluso and Maria Giovanna Devetag

Department of Business and Management, LUISS University, Rome, Italy

Abstract

Purpose –Despite the increasing heterogeneity of the organizational workforce – as a consequence of major

worldwide socioeconomic trends – a considerable number of studies shows how traditionally underrepresented

groups still face significant barriers in entering the labor market. Literature has highlighted several grounds for

discrimination: ethnicity, age, gender, religion, social status, sexual orientation, etc., and while some of these are

extensively investigated (e.g. ethnicity), other fields are still gaining evidence (e.g. social status).

Design/methodology/approach –In the current paper, we aim at providing a review of current

experimental studies aimed at detecting discrimination in hiring and the possible interventions to reduce bias.

Then, we offer a point of reflection for policymaking, analyzing whether such issue should be addressed at the

level of the individual (i-frame) or rather at a more systemic level (s-frame).

Findings –The paper provides substantial evidence that discrimination in hiring still exists, despite the

never greater pressure for firms’ social sustainability. Further, existing interventions appear to have an overall

limited impact in reducing bias. Hence, we suggest that the issue of discrimination in hiring should be tackled

at a systemic level, by means of s-frame interventions.

Originality/value –The paper offers a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon by systematizing

the existing body of knowledge deriving from empirical research and offering a broad perspective onto policy

implications.

Keywords Inequality, Diversity, Inclusion, Resumes, Hiring, Policymaking

Paper type General review

Introduction

Organizations are becoming more and more heterogeneous, increasing the so-called

workforce diversity – a term used to describe the differences that exist across people within

the organizational labor force (Jackson and Joshi, 2010;Mor Barak and Travis, 2013).

The increasing diversity in the organizational workforce is the consequence of major

socioeconomic trends: for example, advances in human, woman’s, and civil rights contribute to

increase labor participation from traditionally underrepresented groups; along the same lines,

technological developments and globalization have reduced barriers and increased the

interconnectedness across markets, favoring the free flow of human resources across

geographic boundaries (Roberson, 2019). Furthermore, it has been suggested that diversity in

the workforce may have beneficial effects for organizations (e.g. Martin, 2014;Gassmann, 2001).

Despite these socioeconomic trends and the possible beneficial effects that diversity can

bring to organizations, several empirical studies suggest that traditionally discriminated

groups still face considerable barriers to enter the labor market, as opposed to members of

majority groups (Lippens et al., 2022;OECD, 2020;Quillian et al., 2017). Importantly, this

Equality,

Diversity and

Inclusion: An

International

Journal

103

© Cinzia Calluso and Maria Giovanna Devetag. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article

is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce,

distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial

purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence

may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

We declare no known competing financial interests. We did not receive any financial support for this

article.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 13 October 2023

Revised 29 June 2024

4 September 2024

Accepted26 September 2024

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 43 No. 9, 2024

pp. 103-121

Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-10-2023-0340

underutilization of talents may bring about a negative impact on firms and society. From an

organizational standpoint, it has been long suggested that discrimination in the workforce

may threaten business viability in the long-run, by means of undermined competitiveness;

Pager (2016) investigated the relationship between observed discrimination and firm

longevity, showing that employers who engage in hiring discrimination are less likely to

remain in business six years later, because of their inability to remain competitive in the

market and keep access to valuable human resources. Furthermore, from a macro-economic

perspective, it has been suggested that increasing migrant diversity has a positive impact on

countries’ economic prosperity, increasing GDP per capita (Alesina et al., 2016); hence,

increased race/ethnicity diversity has a positive effect on countries’ economic wealth.

Further, while diversity has no significant impact on wages for low-skilled jobs, it appears to

yield a positive impact on salaries in high-skilled-high-income jobs requiring high-level

problem-solving (Cooke and Kemeny, 2017). Hence, overall evidence seems to suggest that

diversity has a positive impact on the macro-economic growth of countries, thus, limiting it

may determine a huge economic and societal cost (OECD, 2020).

The aim of the current paper is to critically revise the, by now abundant, experimental

literature investigating various forms of discrimination in firm hiring (see, e.g. Adamovic,

2020;Lippens et al., 2022), highlighting which groups are mostly confronted with hiring

discriminations, and trying to understand the severity of the labor market’s inaccessibility

for each category. Additionally, the paper revisits existing interventions to reduce

discrimination and draws some implications for policymaking.

The current state of discrimination in hiring

Research on discrimination in the labor market has focused for a long time on non-

experimental approaches to isolate the impact of discrimination on employees’ wages. For

example, discrimination in hiring practices has been investigated by means of interviews,

surveys, or comparisons across salaries of majority vs minority groups (Pager, 2007;

Paradies, 2006;Zhang, 2008). While these approaches have the merit of providing initial

insights into the experiences and in raising awareness regarding salary differences faced by

discriminated groups, on the other hand, these methods tend to neglect possible biases – as

the effect of social desirability of the majority group in answering surveys and interviews –

while salary differences are not able to capture the complexity of the phenomenon. Hence,

overall, these limitations make it difficult to truly evaluate the extent of labor discrimination.

The publication of the work by Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004) has exerted a

considerable impact in the study of discrimination in the workforce by means of

correspondence experiments (also known as audit or resumes’ studies), wherein resumes

are sent to organizations in order to evaluate the extent of subsequent positive callbacks.

Crucially, resumes are experimentally manipulated to compare applicants from majority and

minority groups: CVs are identical in every respect, with the only exception of the specific

characteristic under investigation (i.e. female vs male, Black-sounding name vs White-

sounding name etc.). Resumes are then sent to large numbers of firms as spontaneous

applications, or to respond to specific job openings, and after a specified period of time

differences across the percentages of positive callbacks (i.e. calls to set an interview) are

examined across the fictional candidates of minority and majority groups (for a revision on

the methods see Adamovic, 2020). This method is currently considered the gold-standard for

evaluating discrimination in the labor market, because by estimating and comparing the

percentage of callbacks, it is possible to draw causal interpretations underlying the results

and because, by observing real recruiters’ decisions, it is also characterized by higher

external validity (Baert, 2018;Neumark, 2018;Verhaeghe, 2022). There have been also

critiques to resumes’ studies – such as the famous Heckman and Siegelman critique

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