Dominant Group Blowback to Organizational Diversity Policies

As the workforce has become increasingly diverse, many organizations have responded by implementing various approaches to managing workforce diversity, including formal diversity policies. Organizational diversity policies are widespread in organizations; however, scholars are only beginning to examine the impact of diversity policies on the attitudes and behaviors of potential or actual employees. Although diversity policies often target underrepresented groups, dominant groups are still exposed to them and such exposure could impact their attitudes and behavior. I propose that dominant group members will respond negatively to organizational diversity policies. This will lead to blowback from members of dominant groups directed at the organization, in the form of increased turnover intentions and decreased organizational citizenship behavior. I find support for these predictions across one laboratory experiment (Study 1) and one field experiment (Study 2). These findings reveal that diversity policies can have unintended consequences. Implications for organizations are also discussed.