Mapping sexual orientation research in management: A review and research agenda

• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Raymond N. C. Trau,Eliza K. Byington,Georg F. B. Tamm
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.22026

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Mapping sexual orientation research in management: A review

and research agenda

Eliza K. Byington

1

| Georg F. B. Tamm

2

| Raymond N. C. Trau

3

1

Department of Work and Organisational

Studies, University of Sydney Business School,

University of Sydney, Sydney, New South

Wales, Australia

2

Department of Management and Marketing,

University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria,

Australia

3

Department of Management, Macquarie

University, North Ryde, New South Wales,

Australia

Correspondence

Eliza K. Byington, Department of Work and

Organisational Studies, University of Sydney

Business School, University of Sydney, Room

4176, H70 –Abercrombie Building, Sydney,

NSW 2006, Australia.

Email: eliza.byington@sydney.edu.au

Abstract

Attitudes, norms, and laws regarding sexual orientation are undergoing a worldwide

revolution. Managers and HR professionals play a key role in responding to these

changes, and managing issues related to sexual orientation diversity in organizations.

As such, the amount of management scholarship on sexual orientation has been rap-

idly growing to help inform practice. However, at present, the literature is fragmen-

ted across management specialty areas. This makes it difficult to have an overview of

what has been learned to date, and detect research opportunities. Thus, this article

aims to provide the first integrative review of sexual orientation research across the

management field over 23 years. We use bibliometric techniques to (a) systematically

identify and map 111 topics in this literature (map downloads from: https://bit.ly/

SOTopicMap), (b) identify topic trends and topic citation rates, and (c) derive an

inductive taxonomy of major topic clusters. We then identify key theories and rela-

tionships in the literature, review key findings for scholars and practitioners, and

identify future research directions. Among these, we highlight the need to incorpo-

rate sexual orientation as a standard demographic question in management research,

and highlight best practices for doing so from other scientific fields.

KEYWORDS

sexual orientation, bisexual, gay, lesbian, LGB, diversity, bibliometric review

1|INTRODUCTION

The significant changes occurring in laws, norms, and attitudes regard-

ing sexual orientation are likely to impact management practices and

social dynamics in organizations in the years to come. Namely, over

the last two decades, lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) identities have

gained increased attention, and have rapidly shifted from taboo, to

politically contested, to accepted in some contexts. These changes

have numerous practical implications for organizations, and create a

vast array of research opportunities.

For example, 29 nations around the world have now legalized

same-sex marriage—with implications for the partner benefits organi-

zations provide their employees. This creates opportunities for

organizational change research on how companies can successfully

implement these changes. In India, the recent decriminalization of

homosexuality has removed the risk of criminal conviction and up to

10 years in prison for an estimated 135 million people

(Wildman, 2020). This has implications for the social identities

employees can openly claim at work, as well as social dynamics among

coworkers (Bowen & Blackmon, 2003). The growing importance of

sexual orientation research is also underscored by the increasing prev-

alence of LGB identification. In the United States, the number of indi-

viduals identifying as LGB is approaching 11 million, with this portion

of the population growing by 29% between 2012 and 2017 alone

(Newport, 2018). Notably, this growth came almost entirely from Mil-

lennials, of whom approximately 8.1% identify as LGB (or transgen-

der

1

) (Newport, 2018). In the United Kingdom, approximately 49% of

people age 19–24 do not identify as “purely straight”(Dahlgreen &

Eliza K. Byington and Georg F. B. Tamm contributed equally.

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.22026

Hum Resour Manage. 2021;60:31–53. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrm © 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC. 31

Shakespeare, 2015). These shifts suggest that management research

on sexual orientation is of increasing importance (a) across a growing

range of contexts (including outside of Western nations), and (b) to a

growing population of individuals and employers.

Indeed, in light of these changes, organizations are increasingly:

(a) taking steps to attract, retain, support, and effectively manage LGB

employees, (b) taking sides on issues related to sexual orientation to

signal progressive values to a range of stakeholders, and (c) enacting

HR practices aimed at managing sexual orientation diversity and

preventing discrimination (Day & Greene, 2008; Day &

Schoenrade, 2000; Human Rights Campaign, 2018; Köllen, 2016;

Lambert, 2015; Pichler, Ruggs, & Trau, 2017). For example, in a U.S.

survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 65% of HR

practitioner respondents indicated that their organization has HR poli-

cies regarding sexual orientation in place (Wilkie, 2014). Similarly, the

majority of Fortune 500 companies have made public commitments

to the LGB community, offer domestic partner benefits, and over 90%

include sexual orientation in their U.S. anti-discrimination policies—up

from 61% in 2002 (Human Rights Campaign, 2018).

As these shifts have gained momentum, there has been rapid

growth in the amount of management research on sexual orientation,

with our analysis revealing a 17% annual compounding growth rate

(Figure 1). That said, given that the amount of social science scholar-

ship on sexual orientation remains dwarfed by research on more visi-

ble identities (e.g., gender, race; Ng & Rumens, 2017), management

scholars have called for greater research attention on this topic (e.g.,

Anteby & Anderson, 2014; Creed, 2006; Githens, 2009).

In light of the increased research attention and social changes

highlighted above, this article aims to take stock of the growing man-

agement literature on sexual orientation. In doing so, we seek to

address a key challenge facing this research stream. Namely, a major

critique of sexual orientation research is that, because it is widely

dispersed across research areas (McFadden, 2015), the literature is

highly fragmented (Anteby & Anderson, 2014; D. Creed & Coo-

per, 2008). In particular, this literature is spread across several man-

agement sub-disciplines and specialty areas, including organizational

behavior (e.g., Follmer, Sabat, & Siuta, 2020), HRM (e.g., Pichler,

Blazovich, Cook, Huston, & Strawser, 2018), organizational studies (e.

g., Chuang, Church, & Ophir, 2011; Yılmaz & Göçmen, 2016), careers

(e.g., McFadden, 2015), and the literatures on stigma (e.g.,

DeJordy, 2008) and diversity (e.g., Theodorakopoulos &

Budhwar, 2015). Per Table 1, prior reviews have tended to focus on

just a particular sub-area of the literature. As such, as Webster and

colleagues have noted, “researchers are faced with a literature that

presents …an assortment of studies on a wide array of variables,

which lacks a coherent framework”(Webster et al., 2018, p. 194). This

limits our ability to have an overarching understanding of the field,

build on cumulative knowledge, and identify productive future

research directions. Moreover, a fragmented literature limits practi-

tioners’ability to have an overview of key insights produced by the

field thus far.

As such, this article aims to provide the first integrative review of

sexual orientation research across the management field. We draw on

bibliometric techniques to map research topics, provide frameworks

to describe the literature, and offer an empirically grounded review of

key findings. In doing so, we aim to (a) provide a synthesis of existing

knowledge for scholars, (b) create a foundation for transferring rele-

vant insights between specialty areas, (c) offer an overview of key

insights for managers and HR professionals, and (d) identify produc-

tive future research directions.

This article aims to make two meta-contributions to the literature.

First, our approach enables us to provide a more comprehensive, sys-

tematically derived description of the literature than prior reviews to

date (e.g., Anteby & Anderson, 2014; Jones & King, 2014;

FIGURE 1 Number of articles on sexual orientation in WOS management journals per year

32 BYINGTON ET AL.