The idea of fairness in employment decisions is nothing new, but, in recent years, it has taken on renewed urgency and visibility. Debates surrounding diversity, merit, and affirmative action have come to reflect broader societal divides, especially following recent Trump Executive Orders. With changes in how affirmative action is regulated and loosening of disparate impact liability, organizations are navigating a world where long-standing assumptions about fairness are being actively reinterpreted. These shifts have produced ongoing upheavals in how employment discrimination is and should be defined, interpreted, and regulated. Without judicial or Congressional action, the Executive Branch has upended sixty years of established employment fairness procedure. 

We viewed SPSSI’s VSI as the perfect home for our work, as it brings together timely scholarship on these tensions, rooted in classic social issues research. This not only allowed us to amplify our views on how deeply organizational and legal theories of discrimination are intertwined with the broader societal views of fairness, and also enabled our work to speak to both academic audiences and policy makers alike.  

As DEI and organizational justice researchers, we suddenly found our active projects in need of drastic annotation in light of Trump administration policy shifts on affirmative action, DEI, and disparate impact liability. Rosemary was discussing with her editor a third edition of her DEI textbook (partially supported by SAGES grants), and Deborah had several students leading projects connected to misperceptions surrounding affirmative action. These policy shifts drastically shifted what we could say about what affirmative action “is” and “is not,” and what organizations should do to promote diversity and inclusion. This led us to pivot toward defining the contrasting doctrines underlying this drastically opposed policy on employment discrimination. We articulated one doctrine (merit-only) that emphasizes narrowly defined job-related criteria and views fairness as treating job applicants exactly the same regardless of demographic subgroup membership; and a second doctrine (merit+diversity), which takes a broader view, arguing that fairness also requires addressing systemic barriers and group disparities in the selection system and beyond. Both perspectives reflect legitimate concerns, but lead to conflicting policy decisions. 

To bridge this divide, we articulated a bipartisan framework clarifying how merit and fairness can be jointly redefined. The core idea is that tension may stem from where fairness is located within the selection process. Rather than evaluating and mitigating systemic obstacles at the end of the selection process, we argue for earlier intervention. We came to propose a reconceptualization of adverse impact, where subgroup selection rates are compared, but only among qualified applicants. In this way, evaluation is anchored in job-relevant competence while still allowing meaningful evaluation of subgroup differences in selection rates. Importantly, this approach considers unequal access to becoming qualified in the first place, therefore advocating for transparency in defining and demonstrating merit. This is an exciting opportunity for organizations, researchers, and policymakers to work together to reduce employment barriers and stabilize shifting interpretations. 

Since publication, we have started extending this work into a broader research program, including theory development and empirical testing. We have also expanded the visibility of our work via conference presentations. We believe there is real potential for progress. By rethinking how we define merit and evaluate fairness, we can move toward systems that are more effective, fair, and legally defensible. 

Interested in learning more? Check out the full VSI article: 

https://spssi.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1111/(ISSN)9999-0025.call-for-a-bipartisan-theory-of-discrimination