Making diversity work: Diversity climate and climate for inclusion as potential remedies

The demographics of the modern workforce are changing and companies are searching for ways to adapt to this altering environment (Konrad, 2003). Yet, extant research on the topic of diversity has not yielded conclusive results regarding its effects (Joshi & Roh, 2009). Instead, boundary conditions such as the work context and type of diversity play a key role. Recently, diversity literature has begun to focus on climate for inclusion as a potential remedy for the poor inclusion of minority groups in the workplace (Nishii, 2013).

With this research project, I will take up this line of research and investigate diversity climate and climate for inclusion as central ways for organizations to manage workforce diversity. In three subprojects I will first investigate if positive effects of unit-level climate for inclusion extend to different disability congruence scenarios in dyads between supervisor and subordinate. Second, in a review paper I will focus on the exact nature and measurement of diversity climate in order to synthesize a diverse field. Third, in the existing literature, scholars focused on the positive effects of inclusive climates. In this paper, I want to investigate the outcomes of a negative climate for inclusion (e.g., the disclosure behavior of people with disabilities to colleagues, the supervisor, and the company's human resource department).

The funding for this project was stopped due to my move to Rutgers University, Business School - Camden. However, I am still conducting the described research.