Originally found at Time/Charter

Job seekers from marginalized groups interpret such linking of diversity to corporate profit or stock performance, for example, as a sign that an organization would value them less and stereotype them more. “The way organizations talk about diversity tells you a little bit about whether it’s an absolute commitment,” Oriane Georgeac, now at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, told us last year, “or rather one that is contingent on the world changing, priorities changing, or on how the firm is doing.”

A new study in the Academy of Management Journal poses a similar question about existing employees: How does the way organizations talk about their diversity commitments affect workers’ willingness to buy into those efforts? The authors found that the most common framing leaders use is also the one least likely to get workers on board—and that the most effective framing is one most leaders shy away from.

Continue reading the original article at Time/Charter.

Read the original research in Academy of Management Journal.

Learn more about the AOM Scholars and explore their work:

• Lisa M. Leslie, New York University
• Elinor Flynn, University of Pennsylvania
• Olivia A. Foster-Gimbel, New York University