Cultural microaggressions pose particular challenges for multinational enterprises due to the vast diversity of employees, customers, and partners across cultures and countries. These subtly yet harmful remarks or actions can lead to negative consequences for firm operations, such as communication disruption, customer and employee attrition, and brand reputational damage. This study investigates the impact of cultural microaggressions and the moderating effects of inclusivity practices and employee coping strategies. Drawing upon the minority stress model, we examine the relationship between cultural microaggressions and various job outcomes. Our findings show a significant effect of cultural microaggressions on job stress with coping strategies attenuating this relationship. We emphasize the importance of multinational corporations fostering more harmonious work environments through inclusiveness practices and equipping employees with coping strategies to mitigate the impact of cultural microaggressions. This study contributes to cross-cultural research by advancing understanding of how subtle behaviors in the form of cultural microaggression shape outcomes across diverse cultural contexts.
McWilliams et al. (Wed,) studied this question.