What are the chief sources of bias in the selection of employees? To what extent can these biases be minimised?

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BUSINESS STUDIES SUMMER ESSAY

Organisation Studies

Jane Stiller

Matric #: 0237293

Malcolm Hamilton Wednesday 11am

What are the chief sources of bias in the selection of employees? To what extent can these biases be minimised?

There are a number of issues when tackling the problem of bias in the selection of employees in the modern market environment. To bias against someone is to exert a preference or an inclination that inhibits impartial judgement. This often stems from a prejudice. Perceptual selectivity operates when we are perceiving other people. It can lead to a stereotyping in decision making and ultimately a biased view point of potential employees. However, people are less likely to use stereotypes when they are motivated to avoid using them. This essay will discuss the source of stereotypes and bias in the selection of employees and consider additional methods for reducing their biasing effects.

The judgement heuristics and biases model represents the current thinking in decision making. Decision making involves choice, and choice requires both careful thought and much information. Excessive information might overload and delay a final decision. Indeed, some managers believe that making the right decision but taking a long time is as bad as making the wrong decision. Therefore the process is sped up by relying on judgements shortcuts called heuristics. The work of Tversky and Kahneman has showed that heuristic-based decision making exposes its users to biases. These are inherent in human intuition.

A person can form an impression of an object or person influenced by external factors such as dress, speech or posture. This is called the ‘halo effect’ and can operate in either a positive or a negative direction.  The effect acts as a screen that filters out information that is not in agreement with an assessment based on quickly and easily recognised information. For example, it would be biased to rate a professor high on the teaching dimensions of ability to motivate students, knowledge and communication because we like him or her. The problem is what we notice first about a person is often irrelevant to the assessment we want to make. This creates problems when selecting employees as the criteria for a good candidate becomes blurred with the interviewers first impressions.

“Stereotyping” is a term first applied to bias in person perception in 1922 by Walter Lippman. It states that we group together people who have similar characteristics and allocate traits to them on the basis of this grouping. Stereotyping is a four-step process. It begins by catagorising people into groups according to various criteria, such as gender, age, race and occupation. Next, it infers that all people within a particular category possess the same traits or characteristics. Then, we form expectations of others and interpret their behaviour according to our stereotypes.

Research shows that the use of stereotypes is influenced by the amount and type of information available to an individual and his or her motivation to accurately process information. They are likely to be inaccurate. However, on occasion they may be convenient because by adopting a stereotyped point of view we may be able to short cut the evaluation process and make fast predictions of behaviour.

By providing more information to people around them it may be possible for the person being stereotyped to avoid such judgements. People are less likely to use stereotypes to judge others when they encounter salient information that is highly inconsistent with a stereotype. This is a method of avoiding bias in employee selection. However, it should not be necessary for prospective employees to change themselves to avoid prejudice from their potential employer.

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There are three main stereotypes which cause bias in the selection of employees;

Sex-role stereotypes

This is the belief that differing traits and abilities make men and women particularly well suited to different roles. The idea of equal opportunity for women in the work place has been a continuing issue in politics for a number of years. Although progress has been made it is important to note that prejudice and discrimination is still evident. Indeed, in spite of the fact that women constituted 42% of the EU labour force in 1998 they continue to encounter the ‘glass ceiling.’ This ...

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