Relative black male employment among business establishments: Relation to management orientation toward affirmative action, organizational context, and organizational characteristics.

Abstract

The economic status of the black population relative to the white population rose dramatically during the 1960's and the early to mid-1970's. Since the mid- to late 1970's, there has been a slowdown in the rise in black economic status, and presently a significant deficit exists, compared to the white population. Part of the increasing racial gap in economic status may stem from differences among business establishments in the relative level of black employment, which in turn is partly due to establishments locating further from the black population. Theoretical approaches to the problem of differences among business establishments in relative employment of blacks have focused on bigoted forms of behavior by employers and workers. Empirical analyses have explained this problem as due to various firm and union arrangements for recruitment, hiring, training and promotion, and due to informal social organization in companies. This dissertation explores relative black male employment across establishments as a function of the context of the organization (geographic location, unionization, and government influence), management orientation toward affirmative action, and organizational characteristics (size, proportion white collar, formalization, and centralization). The data used are from interviews made in 1972 with the top manager, the director of personnel, and the most representative first-line supervisor in a sample of 128 business establishments in the Detroit, Michigan, Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area. The study finds that management attitude toward affirmative action, city location of establishment, centralization of personnel decisions, and formalization of meetings had a positive effect on relative black male employment, which was derived from actual and expected black male employment. Size, unionization, federal contracts, and proportion white collar were negatively related to relative black male employment. A significant study result is the importance of central city location of establishments as a determinant of relative black male employment. This suggests that future efforts to ameliorate black-white economic inequalities will probably be stymied if: the black population continues to be concentrated in central cities; public transportation between the central city and the suburb remains poor; and establishments continue to move from the central city to the suburbs.