A comparison of job performance of Mexican-American and non-Mexican-American employees in various city departments and in a large department store measured absentee rates, accident rates, efficiency ratings, promotional test scores, and sales records. The conclusions revealed that Mexican-Americans meet the same qualifications as non-Mexican-Americans in employment areas.Sociolog

Glenn, Norval D.

Weaver, Charles N.

California Management Review

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GHARLES N. WEAVERand NORVAL D. GLENNJob PerformanceComparisons:Mexican-American andAnglo EmployeesUNPARALLELED EFFORTS have been made in re-cent years to persuade American businessmen to findjobs for the disadvantaged. The first large-scale ef-fort toward such employment came in 1961 with thePlans for Progress program. The Civil Rights Actand the Manpower Development Training Act haveintensified the effort. It is now clearly illegal to dis-criminate in any feature of employment if a busi-ness is covered by the federal legislation. Partner-ships between government and business have beenformed to train and hire the disadvantaged. Pro-grams such as Job Corps, JOBS, CEP, CAMPS, andSER have become only too familiar to the business-man.Pressures to increase the employment of the dis-advantaged are viewed with doubt and concern bymany businessmen. It is well understood that thedisadvantaged possess characteristics which do notsuit them for productive employment. They lack ad-equate education and skill and often have healthproblems and police records. Therefore, business-men face a serious dilemma: they may wish to meettheir social responsibilities to the disadvantaged,and yet they feel they cannot hire inferior employ-ees and remain competitive.FALL / 1970 / VOL. XIII / NO. 1In the states which border Mexico, federal andstate agencies are encouraging businessmen to hiremore Mexican-Americans. These people, consideredas a whole, possess all the traits common to the dis-advantaged: high rates of unemployment and under-employment, low levels of education, low incomes,high rates of crime, and high rates of morbidity. Itis thought that an additional handicap to the econom-ic and occupational advancement of the Mexican-American is the influence of the traditional Mexicanculture and social organization. Among the allegedcultural hindrances are a lack of strong future orien-tation, inconspicuous rather than conspicuous con-sumption norms, noncompetitive values, and obliga-tions to family placed above individual advance-ment.^ Whether or not his disadvantaged status orthe alleged hindrances of his background are respon-sible, the Mexican-American has clearly not achievedhis proportionate share of employment. The U.S.Equal Employment Commission reports that 800national companies with operations in the Southwestand West do not hire a single Mexican-American.-Data from the 1960 census show a dramatic under-representation of Mexican-Americans in the betterjob categories.27Focus of this StudyThis study reports on the job performance of anumber of Mexican-American employees. It seeks tosupply evidence on their performance once theyhave been absorbed into business. The job perfor-mance of Mexican-Americans was compared withthat of non-Mexican-Americans in the same occupa-tions in the same organizations. Efficiency ratingsand objective indicators of job performance wereobtained from the personnel records of the employ-ing organizations. Variables such as age, marital sta-tus, and amount of education were controlled to de-termine the extent to which observed differences injob performance could be attributed to these vari-ables rather tlian directly to Mexican-Americanbackground.The organizations in which the study was con-ducted are located in San Antonio, Texas, a citywell-suited for a comparison of Anglos and Mexi-can-Americans. It is located less than 200 miles fromthe Mexican border and continually receives immi-grants from Mexico and migrants from the borderareas of Texas. The Mexican-American populationof some 300,000 people (about 45 percent of thepopulation of tlie urbanized area) includes personsof all stages of acculturation, but a large majorityare profoundly affected by the traditional Mexicanculture. Factors retarding acculturation include thecontinual exposure to Mexican values through con-tact with Mexicans, residential segregation whichlimits contact with the Anglo community, the size ofthe Mexican-American community, and the medianlevel of education and income. Census data, healtlistatistics, and arrest rates clearly reflect the pro-foundly disadvantaged social and economic positionof the Mexican-Americans of San Antonio.MethodsFor comparisons of Mexican-American and Anglojob performance, data on the following sampleswere obtained: clerical workers at the United StatesPost Office, female sales clerks at a large depart-ment store, maintenance employees at the San Anto-nio Housing Authority, and policemen and firemenemployed by the City of San Antonio.^ The sampleswere divided into Mexican-American and non-Mexi-can-American on the basis of surname or informa-tion supplied by supervisors. It would have beendesirable to exclude Negroes from the samples inorder to make direct comparisons between Mexi-can-Americans and Anglos, but it was impossible toidentify and exclude them. However, we could de-termine that they were such a small percentage ofthe non-Mexican-American samples that their inclu-sion could have little effect on the data.For each of the samples except the sales clerks,the comparison was made on the basis of proclivityto take sick leave and annual leave. It was hypothe-sized that the Mexican-American employees wouldtake more of both. A high rate of illness may inducethe employee to be absent because he is ill or be-cause a member of his family is ill. Tlie Mexican-American's alleged lack of concern for the futuremay persuade him to use leave time rather than tosave it for future needs, as the Anglo is thought todo.Additional measures of job performance for thepolicemen and firemen are promotion test scores, ef-ficiency ratings, and percentages who sought pro-motion by taking the promotion test. Such allegedinfluences as lack of competitive values and relativelack of future orientation predict that the Mexican-American would not perform as well as the Angloon these measures.It was possible to deal directly with tlie most im-portant product of the retail sales clerks' job perfor-mance: theii" dollar volume of sales. This was avaluable comparison, but its meaning was weak-ened somewhat by many of the less well-accultu-rated Mexican-American customers preferring to bewaited on by a Spanish-speaking clerk. Since manyAnglo clerks did not speak Spanish, this gave theMexican-American clerks an obvious advantage thatmight have offset any culturally based handicap.The final measurement of differential job perfor-mance was accident rates. Accident records wereavailable for policemen and firemen and for mainte-nance employees. In addition to such probable in-fluences as poor health, culture conflict and the con-sequent personality maladjustments might leadMexican-Americans to have higher accident rates. Ithas been suggested that psychological conflicts andmaladjustment may be among the causes of acci-dents.* If the Mexican-American's acculturation intoAmerican life is not going smoothly, he may react toit with anger, impatience, or carelessness. Such re-actions would set the stage for accidents.It is important to point out that controls such asage, amount of education, seniority, rank of job, and28 California Management Reviewmarital status were applied when the requisite datawere available, when the two groups differed ap-preciably on the control variable, and when thecontrol variables were found to be closely associ-ated with job performance.FindingsProclivity to take leave.—Information on sickleave and annual leave was gathered on the mainte-nance employees in 1966, on the clerks at the U.S.Post Office in 1966, and on the policemen and fire-men in 1965 and 1966.Among 54 Mexican-American and 29 Anglo main-tenance employees, the Mexican-Americans tookless sick leave. The difference was statistically sig-nificant at less than the five percent level. Therewas no statistically significant difference be-tween the amounts of annual leave taken. No conti'olinformation was available on these employees.Among 198 Mexican-American and 207 Angloclerks, the former took less sick leave, but the differ-ence was not statistically significant. Control of edu-cation and marital status were not needed becausethe difference between the mean levels of educationwas very small and the percentage of sick leavetaken was the same for the married and singleclerks. Wlien amount of sick leave taken was com-pared at different ages and seniority levels, no differ-ences were observed except at the very lowest lev-els. The slightly higher amount of sick leave takenby younger Mexican-Americans at the lower levelsof seniority was not statistically significant.Information on sick leave and annual leave wasavailable on 160 Mexican-American and 488 AnglopoHce officers and for 222 and 314 firemen. TheMexican-Americans took slightly more sick leaveand annual leave, but the differences fell short ofstatistical significance and were not large enough tobe important even if tliey did not result fromchance. Age, education, seniority, and rank of jobdiffered but slightly and therefore, by the rule ofthumb usually employed, could have been ignored.Controls were run anyway to test for interaction,and there was no systematic variation in the Mexi-can-American/Anglo differences from the lower toCharles N. Weaver is Associate Professor ofManagement at St. Mary's University. He isserving as Consultant-Expert to the Mexican-American Affairs Unit of the Office of Educationin the Department of Health, Education andWelfare.the higher ranks and levels of age, education, andseniority.Efficiency ratings and promotion test scores ofpolicemen and firemen.'"'—Scores were obtained onall promotion tests and efficiency reports for No-vember and December of 1966 and January andFebruary of 1967 for tlie policemen and for 1966 forthe firemen. This represented, for Mexican-Ameri-cans and Anglos respectively, 85 and 218 for police-men and 45 and 54 for firemen. For both the police-men and firemen, the mean efficiency ratings werevirtually the same for both groups, and this was alsotrue at each rank and level of age, education, andseniority. The Anglo policemen averaged higherthan the Mexican-Americans, but the reverse wastrue for firemen. Neither of the differences was sig-nificant at the five percent level. When the controlvariables were applied, a great majority of the com-parisons revealed a difference in the same directionas the zero-order differences. The controls revealeda tendency for the Mexican-Americans to fare betterin relation to the Anglos at the higher levels of edu-cation. This may have resulted from little more thana slight language handicap among the less well-edu-cated Mexican-Americans.Among both the policemen and firemen, the Mex-ican-Americans seemed to have been at least as am-bitious as the Anglos. A greater percentage of Mexi-can-Americans than Anglos sought promotion bytaking the promotion test, but this is not conclusiveevidence that they were more ambitious because atmost ranks tliey were slightly older and had greaterseniority. Tlieir greater tendency to seek promotionmay have been more a matter of impatience than ofambition. Among those seeking promotions at eachrank, the Mexican-Americans and Anglos had aboutthe same average amount of seniority.Accident Rates.'^—From January 1962 throughMarch 1967 there were 167 on-the-job accidentsamong the maintenance employees involving a lossof 5,134 hours of employee time and a cost of$8,407.55 in salaries paid to employees while off thejob because of accidents. A comparison was madebetween Mexican-Americans and Anglos on contri-bution to the total number of on-the-job accidents,Norval D. Glenn is Professor of Sociology atThe University of Texas at Austin. He hasnumerous publications dealing with Americanminority groups.FALL / 1970 / VOL. XIII / NO. 1 29or involvement in on-the-job accidents which pro-duced a cost in employee hours off the job, and onaverage number of hours lost because of accidents.None of the differences between the groups was sig-nificant at the five percent level or beyond.From December 10, 1965, through December 25,1966, 207 policemen and 90 firemen were reportedto have been involved in accidents. The Mexican-American policemen and firemen were not involvedin accidents to any greater extent than would havebeen expected from their representations in the twodepartments. In some cases the policemen or fire-men were involved in more than one accident dur-ing the period. A comparison on accident pronenessshowed no statistically significant difference.Performance ratings and sales volume of retailsales clerks.—From 1963 through 1966, perfor-mance ratings were obtained on sales clerks: 44Mexican-American and 43 Anglo on incentives andfor 115 and 125, respectively, not on incentives. Su-pervisors rated performance on the basis of sales-manship, stock keeping, error record, absence rec-ord, dependability, and the like. The advantage ofthe bilingual clerks in dealing with Spanish-speak-ing customers would not necessarily result in ahigher performance rating based on these factors.However, all but one of the eight comparisons foreach year and for each category of clerks favoredthe Mexican-Americans. None of the differenceswas statistically significant, yet it is clear that thesupervisors, a majority of whom are Anglos, did notconsider the Mexican-Americans to be inferior em-ployees.There were 44 Spanish surname and 46 other fe-male clerks for whom sales data were obtained for1965 and 1966. As might be expected, the averagedaily sales volume was consistently greater for theMexican-Americans,^ and the difference held up un-der controls for education and marital status.ConclusionThe findings of this study show that when Mexi-can-Americans and Anglos with the same formalqualifications for employment are compared, thereis little difference between their job performances.When the Mexican-Americans meet the require-ments for induction into intermediate-level clerical,sales, and service jobs, their performance apparentlyis not hindered by their disadvantaged backgroundor by any influences of the Mexican rural-folk cul-ture.Perhaps the most important implication of thisstudy is that the disadvantaged background andalleged cultural handicap of the Mexican-Americansapparently are not valid reasons for discriminationin employment and promotion. It is clear that theMexican-American population represents a sourceof capable, worthwhile employees. Therefore, busi-nessmen should be able to cooperate with federaland state programs to train and hire Mexican-Amer-icans witliout deviating from rational business prac-tices.REEERENCES1. For discussion of the infiuence of the rural-folkcultural background of the Mexican-Americans, see Wil-liam Madsen, The Mexican-Americans of South Texas(New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964); Ber-nard Valdez, "Contrasts Between Spanish Folk and An-glo Urban Culture Values," Colorado Department of In-stitutions, Department of Social Welfare (no date); andCelia S. Heller, Mexican-American Youth: Forgotten atthe Crossroads (New York: Random House, 1966).2. Ray Shaw, "Overlooked Minority," Wall StreetJournal, 37 (May 3, 1966), p. 1.3. For permitting access to personnel data, the au-thors are indebted to Mr. Clyde C. McCollough, Direc-tor of Personnel, City of San Antonio, and to a numberof others who prefer to remain anonymous.4. For a discussion of this hypothesis, see Marion S.Schulzinger, The Accident Syndrome (Springfield:Thomas, 1956), pp. 183-184.5. See Charles N. Weaver, "A Comparative Study ofthe Job Performance of Spanish-Surname Police Officersin San Antonio, Texas," Phylon (Spring 1969), 27-33.6. See Charles N. Weaver, "Accidents as a Measureof the Cultural Adjustment of Mexican-Americans," TheSociological Quarterly, forthcoming.7. Since the days worked by any one clerk are notindependent of one another, no test of significance isapplicable to the reported means.Those interested in the foregoing article are referred to Volume XI No. 4 and XII No. 1 of theCalifornia Management Review. Back issues are $3.00 each. Readers may also be interested inthe article, "Business and the Mexican-American Community," by Frederick Sturdivant, VolumeXI No. 3.To order, use form inside back cover.30 California Management Review

Job Performance Comparisons - Mexican-American and Anglo Employees

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Job Performance Comparisons - Mexican-American and Anglo Employees

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