Does Diversity Climate Lead to Customer Satisfaction? It Depends on the Service Climate and Business Unit Demography

Patrick F. McKay (), Derek R. Avery (), Hui Liao () and Mark A. Morris ()
Additional contact information
Patrick F. McKay: School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854
Derek R. Avery: Department of Human Resource Management, Fox School of Business, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
Hui Liao: Management and Organization Department, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742
Mark A. Morris: Human Resources, JCPenney, Plano, Texas 75024

Organization Science, 2011, vol. 22, issue 3, 788-803

Abstract: Extending insights from Cox's interactional model of cultural diversity [Cox, T. H., Jr. 1994. Cultural Diversity in Organizations: Theory, Research and Practice. Berett-Koehler, San Francisco], we examine the influence of diversity climate on customer satisfaction, a key business-unit outcome. In addition, we explore service climate and minority and female representations as boundary conditions of the diversity climate--customer satisfaction relationship. Utilizing longitudinal data from 59,592 employees and 1.2 million customers of 769 store units of a large U.S. national retail organization, the results reveal that, as hypothesized, diversity climate is positively and significantly related to customer satisfaction measured a year later. Moreover, the diversity climate--customer satisfaction relationship is most strongly positive in predominately minority, highly pro-service store units, whereas female representation exhibits null moderating effects. These findings have important research and practical implications.

Keywords: demography; diversity; service; organizational climate; customer satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1100.0550 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:22:y:2011:i:3:p:788-803

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().