The Effect of a Managing Diversity Policy on Organizational Attractiveness

An experimental design was employed to assess the impact of a managing diversity policy on participants' ratings of organizational attractiveness. Four hundred forty-eight upper level undergraduate management students were randomly assigned to either a g diversity or a control condition. Subjects were asked to read one of two forms of a recruitment brochure describing a fictitious company and then to rate the attractiveness of the company. As hypothesized, participants in the managing diversity condition rated the organization significantly more positively than did those in the control condition. There were also significant main effects for race and gender that accounted for more variance in the ratings of organizational attractiveness than did the managing diversity manipulation. Non-Whites and women had higher mean organizational attractiveness ratings than Whites and men, respectively. Managerial implications of the findings and future research directions are discussed.