Salience Shifts and Managerial Discretion: How Periods of Islamist Terrorism Affect the Employment of Middle Eastern Men
中文摘要
伊斯兰主义恐怖袭击会引发针对被视为中东裔男性的负面刻板印象与象征性威胁感知,但关于此类袭击之劳动力市场后果的证据仍不一致。为厘清这一模糊之处,我们构建了一个框架,通过凸显性转变与工作场所内的管理层自由裁量权,将外部冲击与就业结果联系起来。当恐怖袭击以集群形式——而非孤立事件——出现并被媒体报道放大时,凸显性转变便会产生,这会强化或催生刻板印象,并提高族裔-种族类别在招聘决策中产生实际影响的可能性。此类转变是否转化为排斥,取决于组织情境,后者会抑制或允许更大的管理层自由裁量权。我们使用以下数据检验该框架:1999年至2019年德国的月度雇主-雇员匹配数据、与伊斯兰主义动机相关的恐怖袭击数据、基于姓名的感知来源测量,以及经主题模型处理的报纸报道。我们的分析表明,以多次伊斯兰主义恐怖袭击和媒体关注度升高为特征的时期,会显著降低被视为中东裔男性的就业。这些效应在非复杂岗位占比高的工作场所以及缺乏正式招聘程序或员工代表机制的环境中最为强烈,但在有中东裔管理者在场的情况下则被削弱。这些发现共同揭示了政治化事件何时何地会转化为就业差距,凸显了纳入时间与组织情境加以考察的必要性。
Abstract
Islamist terrorist attacks evoke negative stereotypes and symbolic threat perceptions toward men perceived to be of Middle Eastern origin, yet evidence on the labor market consequences of these attacks remains inconsistent. We address this ambiguity by developing a framework that links external shocks to employment outcomes through salience shifts and managerial discretion within workplaces. Salience shifts arise when clusters of terrorist attacks—rather than isolated events—are amplified by media coverage, reinforcing or generating stereotypes and increasing the likelihood that ethnoracial categories become consequential in hiring decisions. Whether such shifts translate into exclusion depends on organizational contexts that mute or permit greater managerial discretion. We test this framework using monthly linked employer–employee data from Germany (1999 to 2019), data on terrorist attacks linked to Islamist motives, name-based measures of perceived origin, and topic-modeled newspaper coverage. Our analyses show that periods marked by multiple Islamist terrorist attacks and heightened media coverage significantly reduce the employment of men perceived to be of Middle Eastern origin. These effects are strongest in workplaces with a high share of non-complex jobs and in settings lacking formal hiring procedures or worker representation, but they are muted where Middle Eastern managers are present. Together, these findings indicate when and where politicized events translate into employment disparities, highlighting the need to account for temporal and organizational contexts.