Diversity and Inclusion Favoritism: Creating Distributive Injustices That Erode Organizational Identity

Diversity and inclusion concepts remain unclear, which has generated an explosion of new viewpoints to pursue distributive justice. These variations suggest the need for a criterion to recognize partiality or prejudices in diversity and inclusion practices. This study applies the social identity approach to investigate the impact of diversity and inclusion distributive injustices on an employee’s organizational identity. Research on perceived employee distributive injustice (PEDI) suggests organizations that favor a person's social categorization or identity may more likely create unfair compensations and incentive biases. This study hypothesizes that distributive injustices can recognize diversity and inclusion practices that negatively affect an employee’s organizational identity. The study consists of 451 full-time US employees. A Cronbach's alpha coefficient for distributive injustice is .94, and organizational identity is .92. The findings confirm that leaders and HR professionals who implement diversity and inclusion practices that favor a social characteristic or identity will erode organizational identity.

What is NORML? Sedimented Meanings in Ambiguous Organizational Identities

Organizational identity scholarship has largely focused on the mutability of meanings ascribed to ambiguous identity labels. In contrast, we analyze a case study of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) to explore how leaders maintained a meaning ascribed to an ambiguous identity label amid successive identity threats. We found that heightened dissensus surrounding meanings attributed to the organization’s “reform group” label at three key points spurred theoretically similar manifestations of two processes. The first, meaning sedimentation, involved leaders invoking history to advocate for the importance of their preferred meaning while mulling the inclusion of others. The second, reconstructing the past, occurred as leaders and members alike offered narratives that obscured the history of disavowed meanings while sharing new memories of those they prioritized. Our work complements research on identity change by drawing attention to the processes by which meaning(s) underlying ambiguous identity labels might survive.

How to Expand and Fill the Self in Organizations: The Role of Interpersonal Processes in the Employee Organizational Identity Construction

In the era of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA), the fluidity of organizations and the variability of individual work gradually replace the traditional stability and continuity. The question of how to connect employees and organizations has long intrigued researchers and practitioners. Employee organizational identity is the stable force that binds employees to organizations. Drawing on social identity theory, we argue the role of interpersonal processes in the employee organizational identity construction. We suggest that an employee’s relationship-building behaviors can promote employee organizational identity through the connected self. The indirect effect is stronger for employees who make more social comparisons because they are more sensitive to social influence. We collected data through questionnaires of 333 employees using a two-wave research design in China. The results indicate that an employee’s relationship-building behaviors enhance employee organizational identity. The connected self fully mediates the positive relationship between relationship-building and employee organizational identity. The outcomes also show that the positive effect of relationship-building toward connected self is intensified, when an employee engages in more social comparisons. The findings imply that interpersonal processes play an important role in the employee organizational identity construction. Then, the theoretical and practical implications are discussed.