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date: 22 April 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter examines the organizational impact of discrimination. Through its effect on organizational personnel processes, unfair discrimination has far-reaching and long-lasting impact on individuals, groups, and the organization as a whole. The chapter reviews the multiple ways that discrimination can infect human resource practices and policies, which in turn negatively impacts organizational outcomes such as applicant attraction, employee well-being and retention, group and organizational performance, and firm reputation. It then turns to the role of organizational climate for diversity, which has a potentially mitigating effect on the impact of discrimination. It suggests that, through deliberate organizational learning, companies with positive climates for diversity have the capacity to use events of discrimination as a turning point toward sustained organizational change and growth. The chapter closes by exploring how organizations can create the conditions for this redemptive potential and, ultimately, learn from discrimination and prevent its reoccurrence.

Keywords: organizational, outcome, reputation, performance, well-being, retention, attraction, climate, diversity, learning

Alexis Smith

Alexis N. Smith Spears School of Business Oklahoma State University Stillwater, OK, USA

Shalei Simms

Shalei V. K. Simms Department of Management, Marketing & Finance SUNY Old Westbury Old Westbury, NY, USA

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