Diversity climate impact on employee of color outcomes: does justice matter?

Purpose – The purposes of this paper are three-fold: first, to examine the effect of diversity climate on professional employee of color outcomes, organizational commitment and turnover intentions; second, to investigate the moderating and mediating roles of interactional and procedural justice on the relationships between diversity climate and the outcomes; and third, to explore the interactive effect of racial awareness and diversity climate on reported psychological contract violation. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a survey of 182 professionals of color. Correlation, factor analysis, and regression were employed to test the hypotheses. Findings – Results indicate that diversity climate affects organizational commitment and turnover intentions. Interactional and procedural justice played mediating roles between diversity climate and employee outcomes. Moderated mediation analysis indicated that for turnover intentions, there was moderated mediation under both low and high procedural justice conditions. When a diversity climate was perceived to be fair, racially aware respondents reported lower levels of psychological contract violation. Research limitations/implications – Professionals of color from one US industry completed the survey, so conclusions about generalizability should be drawn with caution. Data were cross-sectional and single-source. However, the findings were consistent with past research, lending credibility to the results. Originality/value – Recent research on workforce diversity has highlighted the importance of effectively managing all organizational members. The paper shows that the diversity climate and organizational justice impact employee of color outcomes. Thus, for managers, creating and maintaining a positive, fair diversity climate will be important for attracting and retaining high-quality professionals of color in US organizations.