What motivates Minnesota's Fortune 500 companies to create equitable work environments for GLBT people?

Abstract

Due to rapidly changing social movements U.S. organizations have paid increasingly more attention to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in the workplace. Organizations are ranked and evaluated by national organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC) on work policies about, and inclusion, beliefs, and treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) employees. These factors, combined with the larger GLBT social movement, have caused many organizations to invest heavily on initiatives to create equitable work environments for GLBT people. Developing and adapting Human Resource (HR) policies and practices to accomplish this is difficult, time consuming, and costly to organizations--which begs the question: What motivates organizations to create equitable work environments for GLBT people? To that end, using a qualitative collective case study approach this in inquiry provides a deeper understanding of why organizations spend significant resources to create equitable work environments for GLBT employees. The focus centered on the 21 Fortune 500 corporations headquartered in the state of Minnesota. This study found five primary reasons why these organizations have created GLBT inclusive work environments. These five factors are: positive return on investment, element of a broader diversity initiative, internal organizational pressure, parity with other Minnesota companies, and chance.