Racial Discrimination in Context: The Role of Organizational Policies and Practices in Hiring Discrimination

Hiring discrimination persists against Black job applicants in the United States, serving as a key force in the reproduction of inequality. In this article, we bridge the organizational inequality and hiring discrimination literatures to theorize the ways in which organizational policies and practices may shape racial discrimination in hiring. We argue that organizational policies and practices that increase accountability, transparency, or connections between workers are likely to limit racial discrimination in hiring. Empirically, we examine four clusters of organizational policies and practices that vary along those dimensions. Our analysis draws on an original dataset matching estimates of hiring discrimination from a field experiment with survey data about those same organizations. We find that structural features of the organization and certain targeted relational investments are associated with less racial discrimination against Black job applicants. However, we do not find associations between individual change or public signaling efforts and racial discrimination.