How Company- and Team-Level Racial Diversity Shape Job Seekers’ Decisions

Abstract: Organizational racial diversity shapes how job applicants evaluate potential employers, yet little is known about how applicants integrate diversity information across organizational levels. We examine how alignment and misalignment between company- and team-level racial diversity shape job seekers’ job acceptance decisions. Across two pre-registered experiments with U.S. working adults (N = 1,084), we manipulate company-level diversity using workforce demographics and team-level diversity using teammate composition. Job acceptance is highest when diversity is present at both levels and lowest when it is absent at both levels. Importantly, when diversity signals are misaligned, racial minority job seekers are more willing to accept offers from organization with diverse team but non-diverse company than the reverse pattern, whereas White job seekers show no such preference. Study 2 shows that these effects are driven by anticipated belonging and perceived personal success, which mediate the relationship between diversity misalignment and job acceptance for non-White applicants.

Keywords: Racial diversity, Diversity misalignment, Job seeker perceptions