Ethnic minorities and the leadership glass cliff: Insights into a field experiment

Using a resume study, we investigate hiring discrimination for leadership positions against job applicants with Chinese and Indian names before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We submitted more than 8000 job applications to job advertisements in Australia. We find hiring discrimination against applicants with Chinese and Indian names for non-leadership positions before and during the pandemic. However, hiring discrimination has not increased during the pandemic. Importantly, and consistent with the glass cliff theory, hiring discrimination has largely vanished for leadership positions during the pandemic, for which discrimination was most pronounced before the pandemic.