Do Workplace Referrals Moderate Employer Discrimination? A Survey Experiment

• In Event: 478 - Section on Economic Sociology Paper Session. Getting a Job - 40 Years Later: Advances in Labor Markets and Networks Research (co-sponsored with Section on Organizations, Occupation and Work)

Abstract

Sociologists consider employer discrimination and the extensive use of social contacts in the labor market to be important determinants of racial inequality in the labor market. Unfortunately, scholars in these two research traditions work largely independently of each other. I seek to bridge this gap by examining how workplace references interact with employer discrimination at the point of hire. Do black or white applicants benefit more from having a workplace referral? Do employers reward recommendations from black or white employees more highly? Finally, does race of contact have different consequences for black and white applicants? I conduct an internet-administered survey experiment to answer these questions. I find that black applicants benefit more than white applicants from having a workplace referral of any race, though black applicants suffer a penalty from having a black contact versus a white contact. In contrast, workplace referrals have inconsistent and weak effects on the evaluations of white applicants. These findings have important consequences for our understanding of how network hiring shapes racial inequality in the labor market. Though most network research argues that black applicants are disadvantaged by employers’ reliance on social ties in hiring—either because black applicants have access to lower status, less influential ties than white applicants, or because the personal ties of black applicants are less likely to speak to employers on their behalf—these findings suggest that workplace referrals, even when the workplace contact is a black employee, can play an important role in helping mitigate employer discrimination.

Author

• Fabiana Silva, University of California-Berkeley