Individual Outcomes of Employee Resource Group Membership

Abstract

Organizations increasingly promote the equality and inclusion of minority employees and women through the creation and support of diversity management practices – or formalized techniques and programs designed to improve interactions among diverse employee identity groups. However, these diversity initiatives often make demographic differences more salient, or make majority employees feel excluded, leading to unintended consequences. The primary purpose of my dissertation research is to consider the outcomes associated with membership in a specific type of diversity management initiative, employee resource groups (ERGs) created for minority employees and women. I explore this topic in three separate but related essays from different perspectives, using a mix of qualitative, quantitative, and archival data. In Essay 1, I explore the unique challenges faced by minority employees at work and seek to understand how characteristics of identity affect an employee’s decisions to join an ERG, actively participate in it, and experience outcomes of membership. I utilize a longitudinal qualitative data collection method for this Essay to explore how highlighting a minority identity at work through membership in ERGs could generate problems due to social categorization and other processes related to stigma. In Essay 2, I continue to explore potential positive and negative outcomes of ERG membership, and include an examination of the role non-minority employees, or allies (e.g., men in ERGs for women, heterosexuals in ERGs for LGBT employees), in the outcomes of membership. In this Essay I use an online survey of ERG members from across the United States to investigate the expected social and career outcomes of ERG membership, and the role that allies play in either helping, or hampering, these outcomes. iv Finally, in Essay 3 I consider elements of the environment surrounding ERGs and predict that the variation in legal and social contexts around ERGs could both positively and negatively influence minority employee outcomes from membership. By exploring state-level discrimination laws and community-level resources across contexts, in this Essay I sample from employee members of ERGs from across the country and draw on multiple archival and online databases to understand local labor laws and community-level environment to compile this contextual framework.