Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff : The Role of Mindsets in Employee Differentiation

Résumé En

To judiciously allocate resources, opportunities, and rewards, managers are often expected to differentiate between employees. Such differentiation can be helpful for cultivating a productive workforce, though may also result in organizations under-utilizing employee talent, as well as discriminatory practices, when managers differentiate on the basis of misguided assumptions and stereotypes. In this study, we examine whether people differ in their assumptions regarding the capacity for some types of workers (e.g., those working in high tech) to develop their abilities much more than others (e.g., factory employees), both generally and as a function of induced mindsets. We also explore the potential impact of differentiated mindsets on managers' employee development investment decisions. The results reveal that people hold stereotyped assumptions about employees' scope for development and that mindsets shape the kinds of human resource management initiatives they prefer for creating a productive workforce. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.