Fairness and Bias in Algorithmic Hiring

Employers are adopting algorithmic hiring technology throughout the recruitment pipeline. Algorithmic fairness is especially applicable in this domain due to its high stakes and structural inequalities. Unfortunately, most work in this space provides partial treatment, often constrained by two competing narratives, optimistically focused on replacing biased recruiter decisions or pessimistically pointing to the automation of discrimination. Whether, and more importantly what types of, algorithmic hiring can be less biased and more beneficial to society than low-tech alternatives currently remains unanswered, to the detriment of trustworthiness. This multidisciplinary survey caters to practitioners and researchers with a balanced and integrated coverage of systems, biases, measures, mitigation strategies, datasets, and legal aspects of algorithmic hiring and fairness. Our work supports a contextualized understanding and governance of this technology by highlighting current opportunities and limitations, providing recommendations for future work to ensure shared benefits for all stakeholders

Can Practicing Mindfulness Improve Lawyer Decision-Making, Ethics, and Leadership?

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction, defines mindfulness as paying attention in a curious, deliberate, kind, and non-judgmental way to life as it unfolds each moment. Psychologist Ellen Langer defines mindfulness as a flexible state of mind actively engaging in the present, noticing new things, and being sensitive to context. Langer differentiates mindfulness from mindlessness, which she defines as acting based upon past behavior instead of the present and being stuck in a fixed, solitary perspective, oblivious to alternative multiple viewpoints. Something called mindfulness is currently very fashionable and has been so for some time now in American business, education, media, medicine, popular culture, and sports. Many business, legal, and medical organizations are considering how mindfulness can help alleviate stress, improve productivity, reduce mistakes, and resolve conflicts. Many people from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street practice some form of mindfulness. Much of the widespread popularity of mindfulness stems from (popular media coverage about) empirical, experimental research data in psychology and neuroscience about how practicing mindfulness improves emotional, mental, and psychological health by boosting attention, concentration, immune response, and positive affect, while reducing mind wandering, distress, emotional reactivity, and negative affect. Practicing mindfulness is a form of experiential learning that provides a temporal space to pause and reflect upon more thoughtful decisions, including sustaining ethical behavior and leadership. This Article draws upon various novel interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches, ranging from biology, decision theory, financial economics, management science, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry to analyze how practicing mindfulness can improve the decision-making, ethics, and leadership of non-lawyers. To date, there is little empirical or experimental research about how practicing mindfulness affects law students, lawyers, or law professors. There is a large and growing body of empirical or experimental research about how practicing mindfulness affects people who are not in the legal profession. Based on this research, this Article makes three recommendations. First, law professors and lawyers should team up with neuroscientists and psychologists to conduct multimethods waitlist controlled research studies involving law students, lawyers, and law professors to determine if practicing mindfulness improves legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership. Second, law students, lawyers, and law professors should try practicing mindfulness to see if they improve their legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership. Third, law schools, law firms, and bar associations should try offering voluntary mindfulness training and supporting mindfulness practice to see if doing so improves legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership

A Phenomenological Study of the Underrepresentation of Blacks in Leadership Roles in Professional Services Organizations

The purpose of this hermeneutical phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of Blacks in professional services organizations who were promoted into leadership positions. The theories which guided this study were Spence’s theory on signaling and the Critical Race Theory (CRT). They provided lenses that were used to view the problem of access to advancements and promotions for Blacks in professional services organizations. The research design used for this study was qualitative, and the approach was hermeneutical phenomenological. The qualitative design provided an opportunity to gather the data by hearing the lived experiences of the participants and by capturing their thoughts via a video recording. The participants consisted of 10 Black professionals who work or have worked in a professional services organization in the United States of America. The data were collected through interviews with the participants, a focus group conversation, and journal prompts. The results of the research findings included that Black professionals have obstacles to overcoming underrepresentation in leadership roles, need the support of others for visibility, and should develop strategies for promotion and advancement. The research findings revealed several implications for policies that should be created and practices that should be followed by leaders and hiring managers in professional services organizations

Can Practicing Mindfulness Improve Lawyer Decision-Making, Ethics, and Leadership?

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction, defines mindfulness as paying attention in a curious, deliberate, kind, and non-judgmental way to life as it unfolds each moment. Psychologist Ellen Langer defines mindfulness as a flexible state of mind actively engaging in the present, noticing new things, and being sensitive to context. Langer differentiates mindfulness from mindlessness, which she defines as acting based upon past behavior instead of the present and being stuck in a fixed, solitary perspective, oblivious to alternative multiple viewpoints. Something called mindfulness is currently very fashionable and has been so for some time now in American business, education, media, medicine, popular culture, and sports. Many business, legal, and medical organizations are considering how mindfulness can help alleviate stress, improve productivity, reduce mistakes, and resolve conflicts. Many people from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street practice some form of mindfulness. Much of the widespread popularity of mindfulness stems from (popular media coverage about) empirical, experimental research data in psychology and neuroscience about how practicing mindfulness improves emotional, mental, and psychological health by boosting attention, concentration, immune response, and positive affect, while reducing mind wandering, distress, emotional reactivity, and negative affect. Practicing mindfulness is a form of experiential learning that provides a temporal space to pause and reflect upon more thoughtful decisions, including sustaining ethical behavior and leadership. This Article draws upon various novel interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches, ranging from biology, decision theory, financial economics, management science, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry to analyze how practicing mindfulness can improve the decision-making, ethics, and leadership of non-lawyers. To date, there is little empirical or experimental research about how practicing mindfulness affects law students, lawyers, or law professors. There is a large and growing body of empirical or experimental research about how practicing mindfulness affects people who are not in the legal profession. Based on this research, this Article makes three recommendations. First, law professors and lawyers should team up with neuroscientists and psychologists to conduct multimethods waitlist controlled research studies involving law students, lawyers, and law professors to determine if practicing mindfulness improves legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership. Second, law students, lawyers, and law professors should try practicing mindfulness to see if they improve their legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership. Third, law schools, law firms, and bar associations should try offering voluntary mindfulness training and supporting mindfulness practice to see if doing so improves legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership

Investigating Gender Diversity, Equity, And Inclusivity And Students’ Experiences Within Collegiate Team-Based Learning Environments

As the United States works towards strengthening and diversifying the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce, many national charges aim to increase the quantity of female participants, while overlooking how systematic barriers affect the quality of female students’ education. Many STEM workforce development programs, such as the National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program, are committed to improving the nation’s diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) efforts, enabling technical education through hands-on team-based learning (TBL) environments. The purpose of this study was to take a holistic approach to assess how gender DEI in STEM team environments influence the quality of female students’ learning outcomes and experiences. The socio-ecological framework, guided by feminist standpoint theory, was used to explore how the macro- and micro-levels affect female team members. Through a mixed-methods approach, this work presents two studies: 1) a qualitative document analysis (QDA) that analyzes STEM programs’ recruitment documents and assesses how gender DEI is integrated into STEM programs’ student-centric policies, and 2) a survey tool that analyzes how gender relates to technical task distribution and individual students’ experiences. Data analysis showed that a lack of gender DEI integration into STEM programs negatively influences students’ learning outcomes. First, almost all of the national STEM programs failed to embed gender DEI into the programmatic frameworks and strategic goals. Second, female students were statistically more likely to lead the non-technical tasks on STEM teams, reinforcing the traditional gender roles found in the literature. Also, although female students reported similar motivation levels as the male students, they were less likely to: (a) conduct technical tasks, X2 (1, N = 203) = 7.8, p = .005, (b) feel like they can lead group work and be effective, X2 (3, N = 192) = 12.9, p = .005, and (c) feel like they belong to the STEM community, X2 (5, N = 196) = 10.7, p = .05. Female students were also statistically more likely to (d) feel like an outsider, X2 (5, N = 196) = 11.8, p = .04, and (e) believe they can effectively coordinate tasks and activities of a group, X2 (3, N = 192) = 12.9, p = .005. These findings add to a growing body of literature that national efforts are not sustaining a conducive environment that promotes equitable learning experiences. The STEM workforce will fail to see its full potential until systems of inequalities are addressed at all levels of the socio-ecological system

Algorithmic Discrimination in Europe:Challenges and Opportunities for Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination Law

This report investigates how algorithmic discrimination challenges the set of legal guarantees put in place in Europe to combat discrimination and ensure equal treatment. More specifically, it examines whether and how the current gender equality and non-discrimination legislative framework in place in the EU can adequately capture and redress algorithmic discrimination. It explores the gaps and weaknesses that emerge at both the EU and national levels from the interaction between, on the one hand, the specific types of discrimination that arise when algorithms are used in decision-making systems and, on the other, the particular material and personal scope of the existing legislative framework. This report also maps out the existing legal solutions, accompanying policy measures and good practice to address and redress algorithmic discrimination both at EU and national levels. Moreover, this report proposes its own integrated set of legal, knowledge-based and technological solutions to the problem of algorithmic discrimination

Framing Justice: Media, Bias, and Legal Decisionmaking

During the 1990s, the news media saturated the American public with stories and images of glassy-eyed, teenaged “superpredators,” who allegedly killed and maimed for sport. These violent, dark and “morally impoverished” youth were running wild in our city streets was the message, and unless we did something, they would destroy the very moral fabric of our society. Drawing on recent social science studies, which demonstrate that the graphic and racialized content of crime news coverage can increase consumers’ cognitive bias in imperceptible, but determinative ways, I argue that exposure to the “superpredator” narrative may have had a discernable impact on not only the attitudes and behaviors of the general public, but also on juvenile justice decision-makers themselves. In doing so, the media had an indirect, but meaningful impact on the uptick in, and entrenchment of, racial disparities in the juvenile justice system and, at the same time, undermined legislative efforts to redress the problem. With the recent passage of legislative mandates targeting the problem of racial disparities in juvenile justice, education, capital punishment and child welfare, and the intensification of an academic debate over the efficacy of the “unconscious bias discourse,” I suggest that this analysis has broad implications