Inclusion climate: A multilevel investigation of its antecedents and consequences

• Author: Isabel Metz,Yiqiong Li,Sanjeewa Perera,Carol T. Kulik
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21956
• Date: 01 July 2019
• Published date: 01 July 2019

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Inclusion climate: A multilevel investigation of its antecedents

and consequences

Yiqiong Li

1

| Sanjeewa Perera

2

| Carol T. Kulik

2

| Isabel Metz

3

1

UQ Business School, University of

Queensland, Brisbane, Australia

2

UniSA Business School, University of South

Australia, Adelaide, Australia

3

Melbourne Business School, University of

Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

Correspondence

Yiqiong Li, UQ Business School, University of

Queensland (St Lucia Campus), QLD, Australia.

Email: yiqiong.li@business.uq.edu.au

Funding information

Australian Research Council, Grant/Award

Number: LP0883701

This study investigates the antecedents and consequences of organization-level inclusion cli-

mate. A national sample of human resource decision-makers from 100 organizations described

their firms' formal diversity management programs; 3,229 employees reported their perceptions

of, and reactions to, their employers' diversity management. Multilevel analyses demonstrate

that identity-conscious programs (programs that target specific identity groups) generate an

inclusion climate. Moreover, the analyses provide evidence of multilevel mediation: In organiza-

tions with an inclusion climate, individual employees perceive the organization as fulfilling its

diversity management obligations and respond with higher levels of affective commitment. This

study represents an important step toward understanding how a shared perception of organiza-

tional inclusiveness develops and how inclusion climate facilitates the achievement of diversity

management objectives. The findings also shed light on the important role of identity-conscious

programs in promoting organizational commitment within a diverse workforce.

KEYWORDS

identity-conscious diversity management programs, inclusion climate, diversity promise

fulfillment, affective commitment, multilevel mediation

1|INTRODUCTION

A committed workforce delivers many benefits to an employer.

Employees who experience affective commitment bring high value to

the employment relationship; they work hard to achieve high perfor-

mance and they are likely to remain with their employer over the long

term (Meyer, Stanley, Herscovitch, & Topolnytsky, 2002). Unfortu-

nately, organizations are not always successful in inspiring commit-

ment, especially within a diverse workforce. Diverse workforces are

less cohesive, so employees in diverse organizations frequently report

low commitment and high levels of intergroup conflict (Ali, Metz, &

Kulik, 2015a; Jehn, Northcraft, & Neale, 1999). These negative out-

comes are worrisome in an increasingly mobile and diverse workforce

(Hays, 2013).

It is particularly difficult to garner commitment among employees

whose social identity groups have been historically underrepresented

in organizations. Some social identity groups (e.g., women, older

workers, and people of color) are associated with negative stereo-

types that generate barriers to finding employment (Richardson,

Webb, Webber, & Smith, 2013), advancing to senior levels

(Windscheid, Bowes-Sperry, Mazei, & Morner, 2017), and receiving

organizational rewards and benefits (Lazazzara, Karpinska, & Henkens,

2013). While many firms have made an effort to remove the most

overt barriers and reduce employment discrimination (Ely & Thomas,

2001), subtle barriers built into organizational systems continue to

privilege employees from dominant social groups (Noon, 2010). As a

result, employees from historically disadvantaged social groups feel

less valued than other employees (Kulik, 2015; Spedale, Coupland, &

Tempest, 2014). They view their organizations as less socially inclusive

(Armstrong-Stassen, 2008) and are less likely to develop ties with

coworkers from dominant identity groups (Konrad, Seidel, Lo, Bhard-

waj, & Qureshi, 2017). Even within Fortune's “100 Best Companies to

Work For,”employees of color and White women perceive less orga-

nizational fairness and camaraderie than their White male colleagues

(Carberry & Meyers, 2017). Today's workforce diversity presents a

key challenge to researchers and practitioners: How can organizations

create inclusive workplaces that fully engage all employees, including

those from disadvantaged groups?

A large body of research demonstrates that a positive diversity

climate is associated with greater organizational commitment

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21956

Hum Resour Manage. 2019;58:353–369. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 353

(Buttner, Lowe, & Billings-Harris, 2010a; Hicks-Clarke & Iles, 2000;

Hopkins, Hopkins, & Mallette, 2001; McKay et al., 2007; Triana, Gar-

cia, & Colella, 2010). Diversity climate comprises employees' shared

perceptions of how fair and inclusive their organization is (Mor Barak,

Cherin, & Berkman, 1998). Thus, a positive diversity climate could

address the commitment problem associated with employee diversity.

But how can organizations create a positive diversity climate? While

important positive effects of diversity climate have been demon-

strated in research (see a meta-analytic review by Mor Barak et al.,

2016), there has been surprisingly little progress toward understand-

ing how diversity climates develop (Dwertmann, Nishii, & van Knip-

penberg, 2016; Kulik & Li, 2015; McKay & Avery, 2015). Furthermore,

once a diversity climate is established, how does it influence employee

outcomes? We need a deeper understanding of the mechanism that

converts organization-level diversity climate to an individual outcome

such as employee commitment.

This study addresses these questions theoretically and empirically

by focusing on one important but understudied dimension of diversity

climate: inclusion climate. Specifically, this study investigates the ante-

cedent and consequences of organization-level inclusion climate

(Figure 1). Employees from historically disadvantaged social groups

are less likely to perceive their organization as fulfilling the obligations

regarding diversity management (namely, diversity promise fulfillment)

and subsequently are less affectively committed. Inclusion climate,

and its antecedent programs, is proposed here as a remedy. We pro-

pose that an inclusion climate emerges when an organization's formal

diversity management programs explicitly incorporate social identity

into its human resource (HR) decisions (i.e., identity-conscious pro-

grams). These programs facilitate shared perceptions among

employees that their social identities are valued and they are socially

integrated; that is, they create an inclusion climate. The collective

inclusion climate then encourages individual employees to perceive

that the organization has fulfilled its diversity management obligations

and to reciprocate by committing to the organization.

Our study contributes to the HR and diversity management litera-

ture in three ways. First, by exploring the impact of identity-conscious

programs on inclusion climate, we respond to recent calls for studies

on antecedents of diversity climates, with the aim of “uncover[ing] the

HR practices associated with pro-diversity climates”(Avery & McKay,

2010, p. 242). As pointed out by Shore, Cleveland, and Sanchez

(2018) in their review of research on inclusion, “a key issue in the

diversity and inclusion literature is to increase understanding of the

role of various HR practices in creating experiences of inclusion for

employees”(p. 12). There are distinct approaches to diversity manage-

ment: identity-blind (which does not target specific identity groups)

and identity-conscious (which does target specific identity groups)

(Konrad & Linnehan, 1995). Most organizations choose the identity-

blind option; this is the dominant approach to diversity management

in practice and research (Ely & Thomas, 2001; Thomas & Ely, 1996).

Thus, this study aims to deepen our understanding of the less popular

(Kulik, Perera, & Cregan, 2016), but potentially more effective (Kalev,

Dobbin, & Kelly, 2006; Windscheid et al., 2017), identity-conscious

approach. We investigate the unique predictive capacity of identity-

conscious programs in predicting inclusion climate, beyond the impact

of identity-blind programs. In doing so, our study contributes to the

evidence base related to identity-conscious programs.

Second, we investigate how an inclusion climate influences

employees' affective commitment. Diversity climate's psychological

mechanisms constitute a “black box”(Avery & McKay, 2010) largely

neglected in diversity climate research (Singh, Winkel, & Selvarajan,

2013). Our study positions the fulfillment of employees' diversity

management expectations (diversity promise fulfillment) as an impor-

tant mediator.

Third, by examining the indirect relationship of identity-conscious

programs and employee affective commitment via inclusion climate

and employees' diversity promise fulfillment, this study presents an

integrated picture of how diversity is managed in the eyes of both

employers and employees. Our conceptual model flows first from

what the organization is doing (formal diversity management programs)

to what employees perceive their organization is doing (diversity climate)

and then to how employees psychologically (diversity promise fulfill-

ment) and attitudinally (affective commitment) react to what they think

(Nishii, Khattab, Shemla, & Paluch, 2018). To achieve this, we adopt a

multilevel design of employees nested within organizations, using data

from multiple sources. HR decision-makers describe the formal diver-

sity management programs adopted in their organization and

employees report their perceptions of their employers' diversity man-

agement (inclusion climate). Therefore, our study distinguishes

between different levels of HR systems (programs versus climate),

using the most knowledgeable informants at each level (Arthur & Boy-

les, 2007).

2|THE PROBLEM OF EMPLOYEE

COMMITMENT

From a social exchange perspective, employees form expectations of

what their employers are obligated to provide in the employment rela-

tionship. Fulfillment of that “psychological contract”is associated with

more positive employee attitudes (Morrison & Robinson, 1997; Zhao,

Wayne, Glibkowski, & Bravo, 2007). Diversity promise fulfillment is

the achievement of a unique type of psychological contract that

reflects employees' expectations of employer obligations regarding

diversity management. These obligations include having a diverse and

representative workforce, appreciating input from minority group

members and supporting minority group issues (Chrobot-Mason,

2003). In general, employees both expect and desire inclusion in their

workplaces (Shore et al., 2011). Moral principles sensitize people to

fairness issues in organizations (Cropanzano, Goldman, & Folger,

2003; Folger, 2001), especially for people who place a positive

FIGURE 1 Hypothesized multilevel model. Note. H: hypothesis. H3

and H6 represent indirect effects

354 LI ET AL.