How Does Intersectionality Impact Work Attitudes? The Effect of Layered Group Memberships in a Field Sample
- PDF / 496,287 Bytes
- 18 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 21 Downloads / 275 Views
REPORT
How Does Intersectionality Impact Work Attitudes? The Effect of layered Group Memberships in a Field Sample Nicholas P. Salter 1
&
Katina Sawyer 2 & Scott T. Gebhardt 3
Accepted: 22 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of identifying with multiple minority statuses on workplace experiences. Specifically, we sought to determine how holding multiple minority statuses affects job attitudes, depending on how many and which minority statuses one holds. Using an archival dataset of nearly 6,000,000 employees from multiple organizations, we examined a subset of diverse respondents’ perceptions of supervisor effectiveness, organizational effectiveness, satisfaction with pay, satisfaction with growth opportunities, and perceptions of diversity climate. Results suggest that multiple minority statuses generally do not have a straightforward additive effect (i.e., having a greater number of minority statuses does not necessarily relate to a decrease in job attitudes). Instead, the results suggest a multiplicative approach in that minority statuses intersect to impact job attitudes, and some intersecting group memberships exert stronger effects than others. Findings from this study contribute to our understanding of the effects of different combinations of minority statuses on job attitudes, as well as a stronger understanding of the impact of intersectionality in the workplace in general. Keywords Intersectionality . Gender . Race . Sexual orientation . Age . Disability . Workplace
Introduction and Background In today’s global workforce, research on diversity in organizations has now become commonplace. Given the complexities of identity, most of the literature has focused on the impact of singular group memberships on work outcomes. Indeed, there are so many studies which have successfully examined the impact of individual group statuses on key outcomes at work that there are entire literatures assessing the impact of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and other group statuses on workplace outcomes (see Lyons & Kuron, 2014;
* Nicholas P. Salter [email protected] Katina Sawyer [email protected] Scott T. Gebhardt [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, Hofstra University, 1000 Hempstead Turnpike, Hempstead, NY 11549, USA
2
George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
3
Mercer, New York, USA
McDonald, 2012; Wong, Derthick, David, Saw and Okazaki, 2014; or Badgett, Lau, Sears and Ho, 2007, for some reviews of the impact of holding single stigmatized group statuses at work). These important bodies of literature have played a critical role in advancing our understanding of the ways in which basic demographic diversity plays a role in determining attitudes, performance, and well-being at work. However, although these studies are useful in providing baseline information about the impact of diversity on work outcomes, scholars have argued that studying diversity using sing
Data Loading...
