ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the extent to which federal supervisors support the concept of representative bureaucracy, and perhaps more important, the impact of their attitudes on their hiring decisions. The suggestion that education and experience in the workforce would provide socialization in favor of the merit system over representation was only partially supported. To examine the relationship between supervisors' attitudes about representation and their actual recruitment efforts, a subsample of the supervisors responding to the MSPB Supervisor Survey was employed. Even controlling for other factors, support for a representative workforce increases the likelihood that a supervisor will recruit Latinos. The chapter suggests that what is most important for the analysis of the barriers to achieving a representative federal bureaucracy is whether supervisors' lack of support has a discernible impact on their efforts to correct the underrepresentation in their workforces.
