From individual to organizational bias
A norm-critical proposition for unconscious bias intervention in organizations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/kkf.v31i3.128974Nøgleord:
Ubevidst Bias, Implicit Bias, Normkritik, Organisatorisk Mangfoldighed, Aktionsforskning, Design ThinkingResumé
It is generally accepted in organization and management studies that individuals are implicitly biased, and that biased behavior has organizational consequences for diversity, equality, and inclusion. Existing bias interventions are found not to lead to signifi cant changes in terms of eliminating individual bias, reducing discrimination, or increasing the numbers of underrepresented minorities in organizations. This article links the absence of positive change to a lack of engagement with the structural-organizational contexts, processes, and practices that reproduce bias. We identify three concrete shortcomings in the literature: that interventions are: 1) largely ignorant of broader societal power structures; 2) detached from specifi c organizational contexts; and 3) decoupled from concrete organizational action. By combining insights from unconscious bias research with norm critique and design thinking, we develop a proposition for a new intervention model that forgoes the individualization of unconscious bias and extends to a structural understanding of bias as embedded in organizational norms. The article draws on data from an action research project that included a workshop series developed and organized in three Scandinavian countries over one year. The data provide the basis for an empirically grounded conceptualization of the organizational bias intervention advanced by the authors.
Referencer
Acker, J. 2006. Inequality regimes: Gender, class, and race in organizations. Gender & Society. 20(4), 441–464.
Agerström, J. and Rooth, D.-O. 2009. Implicit prejudice and ethnic minorities: Arab-Muslims in Sweden. International Journal of Manpower. 30(1/2), 43–55.
Agerström, J. and Rooth, D.-O. 2011. The Role of Automatic Obesity Stereotypes in Real Hiring Discrimination. Journal of Applied Psychology. 96(4), 790–805.
Ahmed, S. 2007. Declarations of whiteness: the non-performativity of anti-racism. Borderlands. 3(2), n.p.
Ahmed, S. 2009. Embodying diversity: problems and paradoxes for Black feminists. Race Ethnicity and Education. 12(1), 41-52.
Ahonen, P., Tienari, J., Meriläinen, S. and Pullen, A. (2013). Hidden contexts and invisible power relations: A Foucauldian reading of diversity research. Human Relations. 67(3), 263–286.
Applebaum, B. 2008. White privilege/White complicity: Connecting “benefiting from” to “contributing to.”. Philosophy of Education Yearbook. 292-300.
Applebaum, B. 2019. Remediating Campus Climate: Implicit Bias Training Is Not Enough. Studies in Philosophy and Education. 38, 129-141.
Ashcraft, K.L. 2013. The glass slipper: “Incorporating” occupational identity in management studies. The Academy of Management Review. 38(1), 6–31.
Ashcraft, K.L. and Muhr, S.L. 2018. Coding military command as a promiscuous practice? Unsettling the gender binaries of leadership metaphors. Human Relations. 71(2), 206-228.
Banse, R., Seise, J. and Zerbes, N. 2001. Implicit Attitudes Toward Homosexuality: Reliability, Validity, and Controllability of the IAT. Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie. 48(2), 145–160.
Blanton, H., Jaccard, J., Klick, J., Mellers, B., Mitchell, G. and Tetlock, P.E. 2009. Strong Claims and Weak Evidence: Reassessing the Predictive Validity of the IAT’. Journal of Applied Psychology. 94(3), 567–582.
Braun, S., Stegmann, S., Bark, A.S.H., Junker, N.M. and van Dick, R. 2017. Think manager—think male, think follower—think female: Gender bias in implicit followership theories. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. 47(7), 377-388.
Brief, A.P., Dietz, J., Cohen, R.R., Pugh, S.D. and Vaslow, J.B. 2000. Just Doing Business: Modern Racism and Obedience to Authority as Explanations for Employment Discrimination. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 81(1), 72-97.
Brown, T. 2008. Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review. 86(6), 84–92.
Brown, T. and Wyatt, J. 2010. Design Thinking for Social Innovation. Stanford Social Innovation Review. [Online]. [Accessed 12 October 2020]. Available from: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/design_thinking_for_social_innovation#
Buchanan, R. 1992. Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Design Issues. 8(2). 5–21.
Butler, J. 1990. Gender trouble. New York. Routledge.
Butler, J. 2011/1993. Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of ‘sex’. New York: Routledge.
Christensen, J.F. 2018. Queer Organising and Performativity: Towards a Norm-Critical Conceptualisation of Organisational Intersectionality. ephemera – theory & politics in organization. 18(1), 103–30.
Christensen, J.F. 2020. Weird Ways of Normalizing: Queering Diversity Research Through Norm Critique. In: Just, S.N., Risberg, A. and Villesèche, F. eds. The Routledge Companion to Organizational Diversity Research Methods. London: Routledge, 59-72.
Christensen, J.F., Guschke, B.L., Storm, K.I.L. and Muhr, S.L. 2021. The norm of norms in HRM research: A review and suggestions for future studies. Human Resource Management Review. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2021.100859.
Christensen, J.F., Mahler, R. and Teilmann-Lock, S. 2020. GenderLAB: Norm-critical design thinking for gender equality and diversity. Organization. Online first. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1350508420961528.
Christensen, J.F. and Muhr, S.L. 2019. H(a)unting quotas: An empirical analysis of the uncanniness of gender quotas. ephemera: theory & politics in organization. 19(1), 77–105.
Chamorro-Preuzic, T. 2019. Why do so many incompetent men become leaders? (And how to fix it). Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.
Chang, E.H., Milkman, K.L., Gromet, D.M., Rebele, R.W., Massey, C., Duckworth, A.L. and Grant, A.M. 2019. The mixed effects of online diversity training. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 116(16), 7778-7783.
Cohen, L. and El-Sawad, A. 2007. Lived experience of offshoring: An examination of UK and Indian financial service employees' accounts of themselves and one another. Human Relations. 60(8), 1235-1262.
Collins, P.H. 2000. Black Feminist Thought. Oxfordshire: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
Correll, S.J. 2017. Reducing Gender Biases in Modern Workplaces: A Small Wins Approach to Organizational Change. Gender & Society. 31(6), 725-750.
Correll, J., Park, B. and Smith, J.A. 2008. Colorblind and Multicultural Prejudice Reduction Strategies in High-Conflict Situations. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. 11(4), 471-491.
Crisp, R.J. and Beck, S.R. 2005. Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Moderating Role of Ingroup Identification. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations. 8(2), 173–186.
Dasgupta, N. and Asgari, S. 2004. Seeing is believing: Exposure to counterstereotypic women leaders and its effects on the malleability of automatic gender stereotyping. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 40, 642-658.
Devine, P.G., Forscher, P.S., Austin, A.J. and Cox, W.T.L. 2012. Long-term reduction in implicit race bias: A prejudice habit-breaking intervention. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 48(6), 1267–1278.
Dobbin, F. and Kalev, A. 2018. Why Doesn’t Diversity Training Work? The Challenge for Industry and Academia. Anthropology Now. 10(2), 48–55.
Dobbin, F., Kalev, A. and Kelly, E. 2007. Diversity management in corporate America. Contexts. 6(4), 21-27.
Dovidio, J. F., Hewstone, M., Glick, P. and Esses, V.M. 2010. Prejudice, Stereotyping and Discrimination: Theoretical and Empirical Overview. In: Dovidio, J. F., Hewstone, M., Glick, P. and Esses, V.M. eds. The SAGE Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping and Discrimination. London: SAGE, 3-28.
Duguid, M.M. and Thomas-Hunt, M.C. 2015. Condoning stereotyping? How awareness of stereotyping prevalence impacts expression of stereotypes. Journal of Applied Psychology. 100(2), 343-359.
Ellemers, N. 2014. Women at Work: How Organizational Features Impact Career Development. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 1(1), 46-54.
Elsbach, K.D. and Stigliani, I. 2018 Design Thinking and Organizational Culture: A Review and Framework for Future Research. Journal of Management. 44(6), 2274–306.
Emerson, J. 2017. Don’t Give Up on Unconscious Bias Training – Make It Better. Harvard Business Review [Online]. 28 April. [Accessed 5 October 2020]. Available from: https://hbr.org/2017/04/dont-give-up-on-unconscious-bias-training-make-it-better
Forscher, P.S., Mitamura, C., Dix, E.L., Cox, W.T.L. and Devine, P.T. 2017. Breaking the prejudice habit: Mechanisms, timecourse, and longevity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 72, 133-146.
Gawronski, B., Deutsch R., Mbirkou, S., Seibt, B. and Strack, F. 2008. When "Just Say No" Is not Enough: Affirmation versus Negation Training and the Reduction of Automatic Stereotype Activation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 44(2), 370-377.
Ghorashi, H. and Ponzoni, E. 2014. Reviving agency: taking time and making space for rethinking diversity and inclusion. European Journal of Social Work. 17(2), 161-74.
Gilmore, S. and Kenny, K. 2015. Work-worlds colliding: Self-reflexivity, power and emotion in organizational ethnography. Human Relations. 68(1), 55-78.
Girod, S., Fassiotto, M., Grewal, D., Ku, M.C., Sriram, N., Nosek, B.A. and Valentine, H. 2016. Reducing Implicit Gender Leadership Bias in Academic Medicine With an Educational Intervention. Academic Medicine. 91(8), 1143-1150.
Greenwald, A.G., McGhee, D.E., Schwartz, J.L.K. 1998. Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit Cognition: The Implicit Association Test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 74(6), 1464-1480.
Greenwood, D.J. and Levin, M. 2007. Introduction to action research: Social research for social change. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Henriksson, A. 2017. Norm-critical rationality: emotions and the institutional influence of queer resistance. Journal of Political Power. 10(2), 149-165.
Holck, L. 2018. Unequal by structure: Exploring the structural embeddedness of organizational diversity. Organization 25(2), 242–259.
Holck, L. and Muhr, S.L. 2017. Unequal solidarity? Towards a norm-critical approach to welfare logics. Scandinavian Journal of Management. 33(1), 1-11.
Hvenegård-Lassen, K., Staunæs, D. and Lund. R. 2020. Intersectionality, Yes, but How? Approaches and Conceptualizations in Nordic Feminist Research and Activism. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research. 28(3), 173-182.
Janssens, M. and Zanoni, P. 2014 Alternative diversity management: Organizational practices fostering ethnic equality at work. Scandinavian Journal of Management. 30(3), 317-331.
Kalev, A., Dobbin, F. and Kelly, E. 2006. Best Practices or Best Guesses? Assessing the Efficacy of Corporate Affirmative Action and Diversity Policies. American Sociological Review. 71, 589-617.
Kalpazidou Schmidt, E. and Cacace, M. 2019. Setting up a dynamic framework to activate gender equality structural transformation in research organizations. Science and Public Policy. 46(3), 321-338.
Kidder, D.L., Lankau, M.J., Chrobot-Mason, D., Mollica, K.A. and Friedman, R.A. 2004. Backlash toward diversity initiatives: Examining the impact of diversity program justification, personal and group outcomes. The International Journal of Conflict Management. 15(1), 77-102.
Marvel, J.D. 2016. Unconscious Bias in Citizens’ Evaluations of Public Sector Performance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. 26(1), 143-158.
McIntosh, P., 2020. White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies (1988). In: McIntosh. P. ed. On Privilege, Fraudulence, and Teaching As Learning: Selected Essays 1981–2019. Routledge, 17–28.
Mcintosh, P., Kimmel, M.S. and Ferber, A.L. 2017. White privilege and male privilege. In: Mcintosh, P., Kimmel, M.S. and Ferber, A.L. eds. Privilege: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 28–40.
Muhr, S.L. 2019. Ledelse af køn. Hvordan kønstereotyper former kvinders og mænds karrierer. En bog om barrierer og nye strategier. Copenhagen: Djøf Forlag.
Murray, B. 2016. The Unconscious Bias Trap: How Misconceptions About Unconscious Bias Can Trip Up Any Business. Effective Executive. 19(4), 20-26.
Nkomo, S. and Hoobler, J.M. 2014. A historical perspective on diversity ideologies in the United States: Reflections on human resource management research and practice. Human Resource Management Review. 24(3), 245-257.
Noon, M. 2018. Pointless Diversity Training: Unconscious Bias, New Racism and Agency. Work, Employment and Society. 32(1), 198-209.
Plotnikof, M. and Graack-Larsen, J. 2018. Case om normkritisk pædagogik og ledelse – pædagogisk arbejde med (u)lige deltagelsesmuligheder. Lederliv. 3 December, 1-8.
Quillan, L. 2006. New Approaches to Understanding Racial Prejudice and Discrimination. Annual Review of Sociology. 32, 299-328.
Rodriguez, J.K., Holvino, E., Fletcher, J.K. and Nkomo, S.M. 2016. The theory and praxis of intersectionality in work and organisations: Where do we go from here? Gender, Work and Organization. 23(3), 201-22.
Smith, A.N., Brief, A.P. and Colella, A. 2010. Bias in Organizations. In: Dovidio, J.F., Hewstone, M., Glick, P. and Esses, V.M. eds. The SAGE Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping and Discrimination. London: SAGE, 441-456.
Staunæs, D. 2017. Grøn af misundelse, rød af skam, og hvid som uskylden – (post)psykologiske tanker om nye motivationsteknologier, følelsesøkonomi og affirmativ normkritik. Lederliv. 12 December, 1-24.
Steffens, M.C. 2004. Is the Implicit Association Test Immune to Faking? Experimental Psychology. 51(3), 165–179.
Sullivan, S. 2006. Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Tate, S.A. and Page, D. 2018. Whiteliness and institutional racism: hiding behind (un)conscious bias. Ethics and Education. 13(1), 141-155.
Warnecke, T. 2016. Capabilities, human development, and design thinking: a framework for gender-sensitive entrepreneurship programs. Review of Social Economy. 74(4), 420-430.
Wiggins-Romesburg, C.A. and Githens, R.P. 2018. The Psychology of Diversity Resistance and Integration. Human Resource Development Review. 17(2), 179-198.
Yanow, D. 2012. Organizational ethnography between toolbox and world- making. Journal of Organizational Ethnography. 1(1), 31-42.
Downloads
Publiceret
Citation/Eksport
Nummer
Sektion
Licens
Copyright (c) 2021 Bontu Lucie Guschke, Jannick Friis Christensen
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/88x31.png)
Dette værk er under følgende licens Creative Commons Navngivelse –Ikke-kommerciel (by-nc).
Udgivelser i Kvinder, Køn og Forskning er beskyttet under Creative Commons License: CC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0