One Step Forward, One Step Back: White Male Top Manager Organizational Identification and Helping Behavior toward Other Executives Following the Appointment of a Female or Racial Minority CEO

In this paper, we examine white male managers’ intrapsychic and behavioral responses to the appointment of a female or a racial minority CEO at their firm. Drawing from intergroup relations literatures, we theorize how and why the appointment of a minority-status CEO is likely to impact the amount of help that white male top managers provide to their fellow executives. We first explain how white male managers’ negatively biased perceptions of racial minority and female CEOs lead them to experience a diminished sense of organizational identification following the appointment of a minority-status CEO. We then examine how this diminished sense of organizational identification is likely to reduce white male managers’ general propensities to provide help to other executives at the firm. We finally consider how reduced identification might have especially strong negative implications for the amount of help that white male managers provide to colleagues who are racial minorities or women. Our results consistently support our theoretical expectations that, following the appointment of a female or racial minority CEO, white male top managers tend to experience a diminished sense of organizational identification, and, in turn, provide less help to colleagues, with this reduction particularly pronounced for help provided to minority-status colleagues.