Perceived Relational Diversity: Moving Beyond Demographic Attributes

Abstract

This study builds on the research in human diversity, distributional demography, and relational demography by proposing a new construct, perceived relational diversity, that refers to the extent to which employees perceive themselves to be similar to (or different from) other members of their workgroup on a wide range of human differences, attributes, and beliefs. Results from a sample of 346 employees indicated that perceived relational diversity accounted for a significant percentage of variance in job satisfaction, turnover intention, affective organizational commitment, and satisfaction with coworkers beyond that accounted for by commonly used objective demographic indices. However, perceived relational diversity did not explain unique variance in individual performance ratings. Further, perceived similarity to others on personal attributes (e.g., values, goals, personality) was consistently important for explaining outcomes while perceived similarity on other attributes (e.g., power, physical attributes) was generally not important. Implications and directions for further research are discussed.