TY - JOUR
T1 - The perceived cause of work success as a mediator of sex discrimination in organizations
AU - Heilman, Madeline E.
AU - Guzzo, Richard A.
PY - 1978/6
Y1 - 1978/6
N2 - This investigation was designed to determine whether attributional processes mediate discriminatory reward allocation in organizations. Subjects, who were given different causal explanations for the work success of four male or female employees, rated the appropriateness of several personnel actions and indicated their preference among them for each employee. Results indicated that, as expected, the causal explanations typically used to account for a woman's work success (luck, effort, task difficulty) as contrasted with that typically used to account for a man's work success (ability) produced tendencies to award fewer and less desirable organizational rewards. This was true whether the employee being considered was male or female. Thus, the data suggest that the differential causal explanations that arise from sex differences, not the sex differences themselves, result in the unequal treatment of equally successful men and women. Implications of this finding both for future research and for organizational practices are discussed.
AB - This investigation was designed to determine whether attributional processes mediate discriminatory reward allocation in organizations. Subjects, who were given different causal explanations for the work success of four male or female employees, rated the appropriateness of several personnel actions and indicated their preference among them for each employee. Results indicated that, as expected, the causal explanations typically used to account for a woman's work success (luck, effort, task difficulty) as contrasted with that typically used to account for a man's work success (ability) produced tendencies to award fewer and less desirable organizational rewards. This was true whether the employee being considered was male or female. Thus, the data suggest that the differential causal explanations that arise from sex differences, not the sex differences themselves, result in the unequal treatment of equally successful men and women. Implications of this finding both for future research and for organizational practices are discussed.
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U2 - 10.1016/0030-5073(78)90058-2
DO - 10.1016/0030-5073(78)90058-2
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0001539621
SN - 0030-5073
VL - 21
SP - 346
EP - 357
JO - Organizational Behavior and Human Performance
JF - Organizational Behavior and Human Performance
IS - 3
ER -