Discussion Post Response
As Thomas has correctly mentioned in his post, granting too much autonomy to the manager in the hiring process can result in numerous biases. For instance, a bias called the contrast effect comes into play when the manager judges a candidate’s suitability based on the experience of interviewing a previous candidate (Lepak & Gowan, 2010). Additionally, another bias called the halo effect could occur when one attribute of the candidate is so impressive that the manager rates the candidate highly on other job-specific attributes (Lepak & Gowan, 2010). Some candidates might also be good at impression management. Such candidates can quickly gauge the manager’s expectations and present themselves accordingly, although their true natures might be different. These biases can indeed be removed to a great extent through third-party hiring or by incorporating formalized performance evaluation processes (Kearney & Coggburn, 2016).
Moving on to the issue of reverse discrimination, the emergence of various affirmative action programs have reduced the majority groups, particularly the white American male, to a minority in most organizations (DeCenzo, 2007). Such discrimination is unfair from both the shareholder and the stakeholder perspectives. The shareholder model emphasizes the importance of profitability and asserts that managers should focus on increasing the wealth of the shareholders (Bailey, Mankin, Kelliher, & Garavan, 2018). From this perspective, reverse discrimination is unacceptable because it entails the rejection of a majority group candidate even if the candidate can bring about greater profitability. The stakeholder theory is a more ethical approach to business that emphasizes the importance of responding to each stakeholder’s needs. This viewpoint is against reverse discrimination because the majority group members have equal rights as stakeholders.
References
Bailey, C., Mankin, D., Kelliher, C., & Garavan, T. N. (2018). Strategic Human Resource Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
DeCenzo, D. A. (2007). Fundamentals of Human Resource Management. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Kearney, R. C., & Coggburn, J. D. (2016). Public Human Resource Management: Problems and Prospects. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Lepak, D., & Gowan, M. (2010). Human Resource Management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.