Results-masked-review-articleThe effects of diversity climate on the work attitudes of refugee employees: The mediating role of psychological capital and moderating role of ethnic identity
Introduction
There is growing recognition that better settlement outcomes are achieved amongst refugees when they obtain meaningful employment outcomes (Colic-Peisker, 2009, Colic-Peisker and Tilbury, 2006). Yet, in addition to facing significant barriers to finding work (Jackson & Bauder, 2014), refugees also experience difficulties integrating into the workplace and face discrimination at work (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2006). Such discrimination is likely to lead them to identify less with their employing organization, and increases the likelihood that they will leave their jobs.
Although researchers have begun to examine the factors that predict the transition of refugees into employment (Correa-Velez, Barnett, & Gifford, 2015), limited research has focused on how refugee employees perceive and respond to organizational attempts to create diversity climates in the workplace that do not tolerate discrimination, and how this can assist refugee employees maintain positive work attitudes. Understanding the processes by which organizations can influence positive work attitudes amongst refugee employees is important given that they have been linked to positive behavioral outcomes, such as improved job performance and the ability to maintain continuing employment (Colic-Peisker, 2009), and also assist refugees to develop social support networks and integrate into the workplace (Gorodnichenko and Roland, 2012a, Gorodnichenko and Roland, 2012b, Hobfoll, 2001).
Unlike other migrants, refugees have often been subjected to major challenges such as discrimination due to their ethnic identity and social status, threats to life and internal displacement, leading them to seek asylum (see Convention and protocol relating to the status of refugees - UNHCR, 2011). Non-discrimination is one of three primary principles underlying the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951), the key instrument of international law which protects refugees. Employment is a crucial strategy by which individuals adapt to new social conditions and establish social stability during resettlement (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2012a, Australian Human Rights Commission, 2012b). Therefore, it is important for refugees to feel socially included, while obtaining and holding onto, meaningful work.
As we have mentioned, refugees may continue to suffer from discrimination after they have acquired refugee status (Colic-Peisker & Tilbury, 2006). These challenges can disrupt their adaptation to the workplace, flowing on to negatively affect the organizational climate and other employees. This is in spite of the fact that countries such as Australia have regulations supporting workplace diversity that should protect them from discrimination. Discrimination faced by refugees is likely to create additional risks for organizations, such as increased their costs due to declines in productivity, workplace conflict and stress, and exposure to litigation. This study seeks to address some of these issues by helping organizations understand how they can foster refugees' positive attitudes towards work through enhancing the extent to which refugee employees' feel the organization supports them as individuals from often stigmatized minority ethnic groups.
In particular, we examine how perceptions of organizational climate, specifically diversity climate, influence the work attitudes of refugee employees. We define diversity climate as the extent to which employees' perceive that the organization values diversity through formal structures, informal values and social integration of under-represented employees (Dwertmann, Nishii, & van Knippenberg, 2016). Drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989, Hobfoll, 2001), we argue that by promoting a climate of diversity, organizations will positively influence the work attitudes of refugee employees through fostering their positive psychological resources of hope, optimism, resilience and self-efficacy, known in the literature as psychological capital or PsyCap (Luthans and Youssef, 2004, Luthans et al., 2007).
In addition, drawing upon rejection sensitivity theory (Downey & Feldman, 1996), we argue that this process will be especially important for refugees who feel a strong sense of identity with their ethnic group (ethnic identity). Such individuals will be more sensitive to discrimination and, therefore, more attuned to whether their organization adopts policies to ensure that their ethnic background is respected within the workplace. The proposed research model is presented in Fig. 1, below.
The study draws on data collected from 135 re-settled refugee employees in Melbourne, Australia, across two time periods. Melbourne has a long history of absorbing a diverse range of economic and refugee migrants into its relatively resilient economy. Workplace integration into the active labor market has historically facilitated refugee adaptation in Australia. However, the Australian government's offshore resettlement of refugees has more recently polarized views in the general population towards refugee arrivals, which might be expected to trickle down to influence the organizational climates in which refugee employees work. This makes the context of this study relevant and important. The study considers the adaptation of refugees from four collectivistic societies in the Middle East and Central Asian countries typically associated with IMAs (irregular maritime arrivals), who arrived in Australia prior to August 13, 2012 and were around two to three years into their resettlement process after receiving work rights. Although the majority of participants in the study were male, around 15% were female, allowing us to control for gender differences in how refugee employees perceive and respond to different facets of the work environment, and how they develop psychological resources. Controlling for gender differences is important given a growing consensus that the ressettlement experiences of female and male refugees may vary considerably (Young & Chang, 2015). Given the majority of refugees in our sample come from highly traditional, male-dominated societies in the Middle East, we might expect the experiences of female refugees to be quite different from that to males. For example, female refugees from societies such as Afghanistan have been shown to face greater distress than male refugees when ressettling overseas, as a result of gender specific expectations that arise from traditionally-held cultural beliefs (Alemi, Weller, Montgomery, & James, 2017). This may make it harder for females to build psychological resources and respond more positively to climates in which diversity is supported than males.
The present study makes a number of important contributions. First, through drawing on the conservation of resources (COR) theory (Hobfoll, 1989, Hobfoll, 2001), the present study allows us to determine whether a contextual resource, the diversity climate of the organization, promotes the personal psychological resources (psychological capital) of refugee employees, and, in turn, influences their work attitudes. Adopting such a perspective to understand the process by which organizational policies that support refugee integration into the workforce influence their work attitudes is salient, given that refugees typically have lower levels of psychological resources than those in the general population as a result of the challenges that they have faced in resettling in a new country.
In addition, by drawing on rejection sensitivity theory (Downey & Feldman, 1996), the present study examines the extent to which an individual identifies with their ethnic group influences the strength of the relationship between their perceptions of the diversity climate and their work attitudes. This is the second contribution of the study.
This study makes a third contribution by providing new insight into the employment experiences of minorities who are refugees from collectivistic societies in the Middle East and Central Asia, which should be of interest to researchers in refugee studies and related disciplines. People from this background represent an under-researched cohort with special relevance to existing refugee policy in developed economies such as Australia (Fleahy, 2016).
Finally, the study also has important practical implications in that it shows how organizations, through creating and maintaining diversity climates, can enhance the personal resources of refugee employees, which in turn promotes their positive work attitudes such as affective organizational commitment (psychological attachment to one's organization: Meyer, Allen, & Smith, 1993), and reduces their turnover intentions.
Section snippets
Diversity climate
The diversity climate of an organization has been defined as “employees' shared perceptions of the policies and practices that communicate the extent to which fostering diversity and eliminating discrimination is a priority in the organization” (Gelfand, Nishii, Raver, & Schneider, 2005, p. 104). Although some researchers have operationalized employee diversity climate at the team-level, the bulk of work on diversity climate has been conducted at the individual-level, examining how individual
Sampling data collection procedures
Data were collected from 135 refugee participants living in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia, from four ethnic backgrounds: Iranian, Iraqi, Afghanistani (Hazara) and Pakistani. People from these ethnic groups are regarded as hard-to-reach populations (Ellar-Gray, Jeffrey, Choubak, & Crann, 2015) as they are refugees (Sulaiman-Hill & Thompson, 2011) and are from conflict zones or have been exposed to high risk environments by virtue of their refugee claims. To gain access to such a
Analysis
Our hypotheses were tested using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with the conditional process modeling (PROCESS) program for SPSS (Hayes, 2013). The PROCESS Macro enabled us to conduct bootstrapping tests for moderation and moderated mediation to assess the indirect effects of employee perpcetions of diversity climate on their work attitudes through the mediating mechanisms of psychological capital, at diferent levels of ethnic identity. Prior to analysis all variables were
Results
The means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations amongst the study variables are presented in Table 1.
Discussion
In the present study we found that diversity climate influenced the organizational commitment of refugee employees by enhancing their psychological capital, the personal psychological resources of hope, optimism, self-efficacy and resilience. However, we did not find evidence of the mediated effects of psychological capital on the relationship between diversity climate and turnover intentions. Rather, the effects of diversity climate were conditional on the extent to which refugees identified
Limitations and suggestions for future research
This study has some limitations that need to be taken into account when interpreting its findings. First, as the mediating and dependent variables were collected at the same time point, the relationships between these variables should not be interpreted as being causal. In future these variables can be collected across multiple time points to determine causality. Second, the use of self-report data from a single source resulted in the potential for common method bias. Confirmatory factor
Conclusion
The present study contributes to our understanding as to how organizations can elicit positive work attitudes amongst refugee employees. Consistent with the tenets of COR theory (Hobfoll, 2001), we found that the diversity climate of the organization elicited higher levels of organizational commitment amongst refugee employees through enhancing their psychological capital. However, diversity climate had no significant effects on their turnover intentions, perhaps due to other contextual
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a discovery project research grant (DP140100774) from the Australian Research Council.
References (84)
- et al.
The mediating role of inclusion: A longitudinal study of the effects of leader–member exchange and diversity climate on job satisfaction and intention to leave among child welfare workers
Children and Youth Services Review
(2014) - et al.
Human, social, and now positive psychological capital management
Organizational Dynamics
(2004) - et al.
Hotel managers' perceived diversity climate and job satisfaction: The mediating effects of role ambiguity and conflict
International Journal of Hospitality Management
(2013) - et al.
Affective, normative, and continuance commitment levels across cultures: A meta-analysis
Journal of Vocational Behavior
(2012) - et al.
Managerial values in the greater Middle East: Similarities and differences across seven countries
International Business Review
(2012) Cross-cultural research on organizational commitment: A review and application of Hofstede's value survey module
Journal of Business Research
(1993)- et al.
Afghan refugee explanatory models of depression: Exploring core cultural beliefs and gender variations
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
(2017) - et al.
Accessing hidden and hard-to-reach populations: Snowball research strategies
Community arrangements for asylum seekers, refugees and stateless persons
(2012)Human rights issues raised by the transfer of asylum seekers to third countries
(2012)
Understanding culture's influence on behavior
A resource perspective on the work-home interface
American Psychologist
Diversity climate impact on employee of color outcomes: Does justice matter?
Career Development International
Employee demography, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions in China: Do cultural differences matter?
Human Relations
The psychological benefits of creating an affirming climate for workplace diversity
Group & Organization Management
Visibility, settlement success and life satisfaction in three refugee communities in Australia
Ethnicities
Employment niches for recent refugees: Segmented labour market in twenty-first century Australia
Journal of Refugee Studies
Ethnic identity and job attribute preferences: The role of collectivism and psychological capital
Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies
Working for a better life: Longitudinal evidence on the predictors of employment among recently arrived refugee migrant men living in Australia
International Migration
Implications of rejection sensitivity for intimate relationships
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Disentangling the fairness & discrimination and synergy perspectives on diversity climate: Time to move the field forward
Journal of Management
Methods for integrating moderation and mediation: A general analytical framework using moderated path analysis
Psychological Methods
Finding the hidden participant: Solutions for recruiting hidden, hard-to-reach and vulnerable populations
International Journal of Qualitative Methods
The influence of relational demography and guanxi: The Chinese case
Organization Science
Unsettling assumptions about people seeking asylum and their access to employment
Social cohesion and skilled Muslim refugees in Australia: Employment, social capital and discrimination
Journal of Sociology
Discrimination in organizations: An organizational level systems perspective
Cross-level effects of demography and diversity climate on organizational attachment and firm effectiveness
Journal of Organizational Behavior
Understanding the individualism-collectivism cleavage and its effects: Lessons from cultural psychology
Understanding the individualism-collectivism cleavage and its effects: Lessons from cultural psychology
Ways of manifesting collectivism: An analysis of Iranian and African cultures
Beyond two decades of motivation: A review of the research and practice in instructional design and human performance technology
Human Resource Development Review
Work group collectivism and the centrality of work a multinational investigation
Cross-Cultural Research
Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis
Some better practices for measuring racial and ethnic identity constructs
Journal of Counseling Psychology
Changing attitudes towards diversity: The Netherlands and Morocco compared
Management Decision
The relationship between attitudes toward diversity management in the southwest USA and the GLOBE study cultural preferences
International Journal of Human Resource Management
The influence of culture, community, and the nested-self in the stress process: Advancing conservation of resources theory
Applied Psychology. An International Review
Social and psychological resources and adaptation
Review of General Psychology
Conservation of resources theory: Its implication for stress, health and resilience
Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress
American Psychologist
Cited by (74)
Labor market integration of refugees: An institutional country-comparative perspective
2023, Journal of International ManagementCoping with dirty work: A meta-synthesis from a resource perspective
2022, Human Resource Management ReviewChildhood adversity and energy poverty
2022, Energy EconomicsCitation Excerpt :PsyCap is ‘an individual's positive psychological state of development’ Luthans et al. (2006, p.3.). It is “a higher order construct subsuming hope, resilience, optimism and self-efficacy” (Newman et al., 2018). The useful thing about PsyCap, identified in the psychology literature, is that it can be developed or nurtured (Luthans, 2012).
The devil you know versus the devil you don't: Disclosure versus masking in the workplace
2023, Industrial and Organizational PsychologyA temporal perspective on refugee employment – Advancing HRM theory and practice
2024, Human Resource Management Journal