Asymmetric Peer Effects at Work: The Effect of White Coworkers on Black Women’s Careers

Understanding the negative peer effects of white coworkers on Black women.

Introduction

Studies aiming to understand the under-representation of people of color in high-earning positions typically focus on factors existing before hiring, like biases in the hiring process or pipeline problems. This paper highlights that while hiring is essential to increase diversity, promotion and retention are critical as well. Therefore, the authors focus on coworkers’ impacts on the career trajectories of their peers in this study.
Elizabeth Linos is the Emma Bloomberg Associate Professor for public policy and management and Faculty Director of The People Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Sanaz Mobasseri is an Assistant Professor of management and organizations at the Boston University Questrom School of Business, and Affiliated Scholar at The People Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Nina Roussille is an Assistant Professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Affiliated Scholar at The People Lab at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Methods and Findings

To investigate peer effects, the authors analyzed the professional trajectories of 9,037 inexperienced new hires across seven years. They explore how having more white coworkers affects the promotion and retention of Black, Asian, and Latinx employees in high-paying professions. The authors made their target population early careerists as they understand the effects of early career outcomes on career trajectory. Even more, the authors focused on high-paying jobs in this study due to the disproportionate number of white employees in these spaces; Black women are the only group of workers who experience higher turnover and lower promotion rates as a result of the racial composition of their peers. A 14 percentage point increase in the share of white coworkers is associated with a 10.6 percentage point increase in Black women’s turnover. Black and white women have the largest turnover gap at 8.9 percentage points. 

Relative to their white counterparts, Black employees as a whole are 32% more likely to turnover in two years and 26% less likely to be promoted within 2.5 years of their hire date; this finding is both statistically and economically significant. Asian and Latinx employees also turn over at higher rates–10% and 3%, respectively–and receive promotions at a lower rate relative to white peers but at smaller, statistically insignificant rates. 

The authors examine three possible causal explanations for the differential outcomes of Black women in the workplace: 

• Assignment of responsibilities
  “One potential pathway through which the share of initial White coworkers may shape Black women’s career outcomes is by influencing characteristics of subsequent project portfolios… For instance, after initially working with a greater share of White coworkers, Black employees may not receive subsequent opportunities to work on enough projects, work on enough high priority projects, or may work on too many low priority projects to achieve long-term success at the firm.”
• Participation in projects
  “Black employees’ initial team experiences with a greater share of White coworkers may diminish their sense of belonging in later project teams, increase their efforts to manage their racial identity to make their White coworkers comfortable, dilute their motivation to participate, and negatively impact their satisfaction with their work, team, and supervisors.”
• Performance reviews
  “Black women who initially work with a greater share of White coworkers may receive lower performance evaluations, which in turn, influence their likelihood of turnover and promotion.” A 2.4 percentage point decrease in Black women’s performance reviews was associated with a 14 percentage point increase in white employees.

Conclusions

This paper analyzes peer effects in the workplace through an intersectional lens while highlighting the limitations of ongoing diversity efforts of focusing solely on recruitment. The authors call for more research on peer effects at the early stages of one’s career to understand the longer-term inequities people face. Moreover, they push for more analysis and investigation into peer-driven staffing and promotion models that may perpetuate inequality.