A Meta-Analysis Integrating 25 Years of Diversity Climate Research

Abstract

Extant diversity climate research has been based primarily upon the Interactional Model of Cultural Diversity (IMCD). While prior research has supported the beneficial effects of prodiversity climates (i.e., work environments that employees view as fair and socially integrative of all personnel) on worker attitudes and behaviors, less is known about the potential boundary conditions of diversity climate-outcome relationships. To address this concern, we conducted a meta-analysis of diversity climate using 109 independent samples from 94 studies. Meta-analytic results indicate that diversity climate–outcome relationships are moderated by climate measure type, outcome type, demographic diversity, climate strength, and measurement source. These findings show that diversity climate is more strongly related to outcomes when measured as inclusion climate (vs. diversity climate), for attitudinal outcomes compared to performance and withdrawal criteria, when work contexts are more racially and ethnically diverse, when personnel exhibit stronger versus weaker agreement in their diversity climate perceptions, and when diversity climate and outcome data are collected from the same source versus different sources. The theoretical and practical implications of our findings are noted and discussed.