Not Your Model Minority: Workplace Outcomes among Asian Pacific Islander Americans

Abstract

In this dissertation, I explored the ways in which race influence workplace advancement and well-being among Asian Americans. Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial group in the United States. Yet, historically, Asian Americans been excluded from dialogue on the success and well-being of employees of color. This, in part, can be attributed to the stereotype that all Asian Americans are high achievers in their academic and career pursuits. The perceived high achievements of Asian Americans, leads to the misconception that they do not experience disadvantages or challenges because of their race. However, as evidenced from past research, Asian Americans are disproportionately less likely to be promoted to leadership and Asian Americans continue to face stressors from racial discrimination. In my first two studies, I examined reasons why Asian Americans face a leadership glass ceiling. While there are plenty of Asian American employees in the general workforce, few are being promoted to leadership. For my last study, I used a sample of Asian American working adults to better understand the role of mindful mindset in reducing stress associated with coping with discrimination. In chapter two, I assessed glass ceilings Asian Americans face at the organizational level. The absence of Asian Americans in leadership has been coined by past scholars as the “bamboo ceiling.” Reasons for the bamboo ceiling have been attributed to several individual-level predictors. Using a secondary data set of faculty members from colleges/universities across the United States, I found that regardless of gender, job productivity, academic rank, number of years since finishing the Ph.D., familiarity with U.S. cultural norms, motivation to lead, or the racial climate of the college/university, Asian American faculty are less likely to hold positions of leadership compared to White faculty and underrepresented minority faculty (i.e., Black and Latinx faculty). These findings emphasize that race matters when thinking about the bamboo ceiling and individual-level predictors do not sufficiently explain the bamboo ceiling. Chapter three further examines the role that race and racial stereotypes play in explaining the bamboo ceiling. Two stereotypes Asian Americans face is that they are highly competent, but are also socially inept and emotionally cold. Since social skills are essential for leadership, chapter three tested whether Asian Americans are penalized in leadership evaluations when they present themselves as consistent with racial stereotypes. Using an experimental design where respondents are randomly assigned to read about fictitious employees, I found that stereotype-consistent Asian Americans are viewed as doing a worse job in leadership and are rated as less hirable for leadership compared to a White employees and stereotype inconsistent Asian Americans. Lastly, in chapter four, I shift from focusing specifically on racial biases in leadership to focusing on how Asian American professionals can navigate strategies for coping with racial discrimination broadly. I examined the moderating role of a mindful mindset in explaining the relationship between a chosen coping strategy and reported stress. Mindful mindset is an emotion regulation technique. People who have cultivated a mindful mindset are better able to recover from negative emotions, better able to let go of negative thoughts, and react more objectively to stressful events. Using a sample of Asian American working adults from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, I found that mindful mindset buffers the relationship between coping with racial discrimination and perceived stress. Detailed findings are discussed in chapter four.