ExCL Talk: "Organizational Diversity Cases: A Source of, and Solution to, Gender Gaps in Performance?"

Organizations increasingly communicate about why they value diversity in their public statements, i.e., they make an organizational diversity case. In this talk, I share work conceptualizing organizational diversity cases as a pivotal source of – or solution to – bias in organizations. This work focuses on two diversity cases. The first is the business case for diversity, defined as an instrumental rhetoric justifying an organization’s commitment to diversity through its purported benefits for performance. The second is the fairness case for diversity, defined as a non-instrumental rhetoric justifying an organization’s commitment to diversity through ideals of equity and justice. Across multiple experiments studying job seekers, we test whether women underperform, relative to men, in negotiations and job interview performance when they encounter the business case, and whether these gender gaps close when job seekers encounter the fairness case. I discuss the implications for scholarship on social identity threat and diversity in organizations, and the potential for the fairness case for diversity to serve as an intervention to promote equity in the workplace.

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