Mandating change: The impact of court-ordered policy changes on managerial diversity (Hirsh & Cha, 2017)

Although the authors did not provide details for each individual case that legally required the use of employer compliance monitoring plans, these policies were summarized as concrete policies to build diversity efforts into the organizational structure of the establishments. Monitoring plans establish internal or external units to oversee employee relations, diversity practices, and legal compliance with the establishment's court-ordered requirements related to employer compliance with anti-discrimination practices.  

The study used a nonexperimental design to estimate the impact of court-ordered employer compliance monitoring plans on the representation of white women, black women, and black men employed in managerial positions. Study authors used data from high-profile employment discrimination lawsuits settled from 1996 through 2008 that required the firm to implement use employer compliance monitoring plans in the court settlements or verdicts for each subsidiary establishment. The authors measured managerial diversity one year following the lawsuit settlement or verdict. In addition to controlling for unobservable characteristics, the statistical model controlled for several lawsuit and organizational characteristics such as monetary awards for plaintiffs, the number of plaintiffs and lawsuits that each firm faced, establishment size, firm size, the percent of white male managers, within-establishment labor supply and local labor market, and the year.