Diversity in Black and White: How Rationales Change the Perceived Focus of Organizations’ Diversity Commitments

Diversity is a broad term whose meaning may be colored by the reasons organizations provide for their diversity commitments. We test whether organizations embracing instrumental rationales (emphasizing the benefits of diversity) causes organizational diversity commitments to seem more focused on White people and less on Black people and other non-White groups compared to moral rationales (emphasizing values). Consistent with this, Study 1 (N = 1,167) found that participants from across racial groups tended to perceive instrumental rationales as more focused on White people and less focused on Black people compared to moral rationales. Study 2 (N = 315) demonstrated the independent effects of instrumental and moral rationales increasing the focus on White and Black people, respectively, compared to a control group. Study 3 demonstrates that these perceptions track who organizations (N = 130) visualize as representations of their diversity commitments on their webpages. Study 4 (N = 500) illustrates the practical significance of these differing perceptions, showing that they influence how people would guide organizations to respond (or not) to incidents of racial injustice such as the murder of George Floyd. These findings elucidate how racial (dis)advantage can be systematically maintained even in the nominal pursuit of inclusion.