Do organizations' diversity signals threaten members of the majority group? The case of employee professional networks

Abstract

Employee Professional Networks (EPNs) are now commonplace in today's organizations, and they are frequently used to signal diversity and inclusion in line with public policy mandates. Despite EPNs' pervasiveness, scant research has explored their impact on attracting prospective employees. The authors address this gap by exploring the influence of EPNs on job pursuit intentions. Across two studies, the authors find that EPNs focused on minority employees (vs. all employees) reduce perceived threat and increase job pursuit intentions among majority group members (Caucasian Americans) as a function of their support for social hierarchy (Social Dominance Orientation). The integration of perceived threat and social hierarchy attitudes to explain the impact of EPNs is a novel theoretical contribution to literature on marketplace diversity with important implications for managers, policy makers, and researchers.