Remedy-Seeking Responses to Discrimination: Does Management-Employee Similarity Matter?

We investigate the effects of management-employee similarity on mistreated employees’ propensities to engage in legal and organizational claiming, to quit, and to not seek a remedy in ongoing employment relationships.

We test hypotheses generated by the similarity-attraction and similarity-betrayal paradigms using Tobit regression and data from vignette-based employee surveys.

Mistreated employees with same-sex supervisors are more likely to initiate legal claims and to quit than those with opposite-sex supervisors, but less likely to initiate legal claims and to quit when they have a same-race supervisor than when they have a different-race supervisor. The effects of management-employee similarity on mistreated employees’ remedy-seeking responses exhibit asymmetries by gender and by race. The presence of same-race supervisors or other managers appears to diminish the greater reluctance of nonwhite employees, compared to white employees, to use organizational claiming mechanisms.

We know of no prior published research that has investigated the determinants of employees’ propensities to engage in multiple forms of remedy seeking, as well as the propensity to not seek a remedy, in response to plausibly illegal mistreatment not involving dismissal.