Discriminated against but engaged: The role of communicative actions of racial minority employees

ABSTRACT

Grounded in the situational theory of problem-solving (STOPS), two survey studies investigated how racial minority employees in the U.S. perceive and communicate about discriminatory situations within their organizations and how they are related to their engagement levels. Results of Study 1 suggested that experiences of discriminatory acts at work are negatively associated with racial minority employees’ engagement, whereas their situational perceptions are positively associated with their communicative behaviors toward direct supervisor and peers. Communicative behaviors with supervisors, not peers, in turn, fostered their engagement. Study 2 replicated and extended Study 1 in different contexts, revealing the moderating role of a diverse climate in affecting employees’ situational perceptions about workplace discrimination. Theoretical and practical implications for communication studies are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Workplace discrimination
• employee engagement
• situational theory of problem-solving
• diversity climate

Notes

1 Creative industries refer to industries that generate or exploit knowledge and information and provide goods and services associated with cultural, artistic, or entertainment value (Howkins, 2001), including television, radio, film, and publishing; fine arts; public relations, advertising, and communications; music and the performing arts. We selected creative industries because acts of racial discrimination have been widely found there, including lack of leadership opportunity, inappropriate treatment and harassment, and lower salaries and compensation (Eikhof & Warhurst, 2013). The surge of activism around racial discrimination in creative industries thus highlights the need for research in the area.

2 This study defines racial/ethnic minority employees to be professionals of color, including Black/African Americans, Hispanic/Latinos, Asian/Asian Americans, and Native Americans.

3 Measures of workplace discrimination in this study were selected from a pilot study (N = 100). Using Mechanical Turk (Mturk), we tested subscales of perceived formal discrimination adopted from previous studies and found low reliabilities (McDonald”s ω = .58). To improve the scale reliabilities and enhance the face validity that captures the current conceptualization of perceived formal discrimination, we created new items and added them to the main study. These items were found to have good construct reliabilities based on CFA results, χ²(5) = 65.30, RMSEA = .102 [90% CI: .098, .138], CFI = .98, TLI = .95, SRMR = .018.

4 Although the bivariate correlation between employees’ engagement and discrimination perceptions was not significant (formal: r = −.07, informal: r = −.03), the negative path from discrimination to engagement was found to be significant (b* = −.245, p < .001) in the SEM model (Figure 2). As the communicative actions explained the most variances in engagement as key predictors in the model, they function as covariates between engagement and discrimination perceptions. Communicative actions is thus turned out to be an important factor that reveals the significant negative effect of discrimination on engagement.