How genuine is your diversity climate? A new typology highlighting the emergence of specious diversity climates

Abstract

Research supports the notion that diversity climate (employees' perceptions of the extent to which fairness and elimination of discrimination are promoted within the work unit) can help the unit attain benefits—rather than detriments—from workforce diversity. However, the diversity climate literature rests substantially on a questionable assumption—that all unit members perceive the environment uniformly—which fails to account for the potential of individuals' distinct experiences in units. We introduce a new typology of diversity climates to address how individual and subgroup perceptions develop and aggregate to reflect an overall climate. This framework calls attention to specious diversity climates, in which a homogeneous population of employees agrees in their perceptions of a supportive diversity climate despite exclusion and/or otherwise unfair treatment of marginalized members. We explore the emergence process of each distinct climate type, explicating how perceptions aggregate to form a unit diversity climate that falls into one of five categories (i.e., genuinely supportive, speciously supportive, moderate/unsupportive, multimodal, or fragmented). We conclude with implications for theory and managerial practice.