What about diversity? The effect of organizational economic inequality on the perceived presence of women and ethnic minority groups Moreno Bella, Eva Willis Sánchez, Guillermo Byrd Moya Morales, Miguel Carlos Economic inequality shapes the degree to which people and different social groups are perceived in stereotypical ways. Our research sought to investigate the impact of the perception of economic inequality in an organizational setting on expectations of social diversity in the organization’s workforce, across the dimensions of gender and ethnicity. Combining data from previous experiments, we first explored in one set of studies (Studies 1a and 1b; N = 378) whether the degree of economic inequality in a fictitious organization affected participants’ expectations of the representation of minority vs. majority group employees. We found that when we presented an organization with unequal (vs. equal) distribution of economic wealth amongst its employees to study participants, they expected the presence of men and White majority individuals to be larger than the presence of women and ethnic minorities. Second, we tested our hypotheses and replicated these initial effects in a preregistered study (Study 2: N = 449). Moreover, we explored the potential mediating role of perceived diversity climate, that is, the perception that the organization promotes and deals well with demographic diversity. Findings revealed that an organizational setting that distributed resources unequally (vs. equally) was associated with a more adverse diversity climate, which, in turn, correlated with expectations of a lower presence of minority group employees in the organization. We concluded that economic inequality creates a context that modulates perceptions of a climate of social exclusion which likely affects the possibilities for members of disadvantaged groups to participate and develop in organizations. 2022-09-28T10:45:55Z 2022-09-28T10:45:55Z 2022-08-17 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Moreno-Bella E... [et al.]. (2022) What about diversity? The effect of organizational economic inequality on the perceived presence of women and ethnic minority groups. PLoS ONE 17(8): e0271356. [https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0271356] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/77046 10.1371/journal.pone.0271356 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 4.0 Internacional Plos One