The Effects of Diversity Practices on Women and Minority Turnover
19 Jun 2024
10:00 -11:30
Times are shown in local time.
Open to: All
Room W4.05 (Cambridge Judge Business School)
Trumpington St
Cambridge
CB2 1AG
United Kingdom
Join our Organisational Behaviour seminar
Speaker: Professor Zhen Zhang, Cox School of Business
About the seminar topic
While organisations often implement multiple diversity practices, our understanding of their interactive effects is limited. We advance this research by integrating the signal set congruence/incongruence literature and role theory to theorise 3-way interactive effects among diversity practices in 3 categories (resource, non-discrimination and accountability) on women and minority employee turnover. We find support with 2 types of employees – non-leaders and leaders – at law firms from 2010 to 2018 (Study 1). We theorise different underlying mechanisms for non-leaders and leaders, finding initial support in an experimental vignette study (Study 2).
Congruent diversity practice sets were associated with lower levels of concerns about unfair treatment (non-leaders) and higher levels of personal relevance (leaders), which resulted in lower turnover intentions. By focusing on interaction effects, we help disentangle when investing in more diversity practices may be beneficial versus detrimental.
Speaker bio
Professor Zhen Zhang is the O Paul Corley Distinguished Chair in Organizational Behavior and Administration in the Management and Organizations Department at the Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University (SMU). He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Tsinghua University in China. Before joining SMU in 2020, he worked at the WP Carey School of Business, Arizona State University for 12 years. Dr Zhang’s research focuses on leadership process and leadership development, work teams and groups, biological basis of work behaviour, start-ups and entrepreneurship, and advanced research methods. His work has appeared in leading management journals including Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Organization Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and the Leadership Quarterly, and has been cited in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and the Globe and Mail. Professor Zhang is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Personnel Psychology (2023-2025).
Register
No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Luke Slater.