The role of supervisor endorsement and supervisor activism in determining employee attitudes of diversity policies: why supervisor integrity matters.

Abstract

Despite the motivation of organizations and civil services to increase gender diversity in the workforce, diversity policies sometimes fail to show the desired result, partly due to employee resistance. An increasing amount of research acknowledges the importance of supervisory characteristics, like behavioral integrity, on employee attitudes and resistance to change. Present research builds on these insights and investigated how supervisor endorsement and supervisor activism affected employee endorsement of gender diversity policies (N = 119). The linkage between supervisor endorsement and supervisor activism served as an indicator of Perceived Behavioral Integrity (PBI) directly towards gender diversity policies. It was predicted that (1) supervisor endorsement and employee endorsement were positively related, and (2) that this relationship was dependent of supervisor activism. Indeed, results indicated that supervisor endorsement predicted employee endorsement of gender diversity policies, but this relationship appeared to be explained by supervisor activism. Together, these findings underline the importance of supervisory attitudes and behavior on the level of employee endorsement of (gender) diversity policies.