On Diversity Climate in Organizations

Abstract

Diversity climate, the extent to which workers perceive that organizations’ personnel practices are fair and successful in integrating diverse personnel, is of immense interest to both scholars and practitioners in contemporary organizations. In this dissertation, I examine the implications of diversity climate for workers’ psychological contracts (Essay 1) and conduct an investigation of the underlying factor structure of diversity climate (Essay 2). In Essay 1, I explored whether and how diversity climate is incorporated as an ideological commitment in psychological contracts during recruitment and the resulting impacts on workers. In two studies, a three-wave longitudinal field study and an experimental vignette study, fulfilment and breach of diversity climate promises were related to workers’ attitudes and behaviours, but unexpectedly, more weakly so for racial minority compared to majority group individuals. Further, in the field study, more frequent use of diversity recruitment was associated with job-seekers’ perceptions that ideological diversity climate promises were made pre-employment, and subsequent perceptions of breach of these promises has negative effects on worker attitudes and behaviours above and beyond “traditional” psychological contract breach. In Essay 2, I explored the factor structure of diversity climate by investigating workers’ responses to a sample of existing diversity climate measures developed under differing conceptual considerations. In two studies, I find evidence that measures of diversity climate can be decomposed into three dimensions about the workplace environment: 1) fairness, inclusion, and synergy, 2) organizational pro-diversity initiatives, goals, and values, and 3) absence of discrimination, which exhibited differential relationships with a range of attitudinal, socio-emotional, and behavioural criteria. Finally, I present some limited evidence that racial minority status can have differential moderating effects on the relations between each dimension and outcomes.