Religious bias and stigma: attitudes toward working with a Muslim co-worker

Abstract

Using social identity and stigma frameworks, this study investigated the extent to which Christians exhibited biased reactions toward a Muslim co-worker. The authors hypothesized that Christians would view a potential Muslim co-worker as lower on competence and less desirable in terms of a working relationship and would be less attracted to an organization when a potential co-worker was Muslim, and that these in-group preferences would be moderated by participant religiosity. Though no main effect for religious group affiliation was found, moderator analyses revealed that highly religious individuals had a lower desire to establish working relationships with or work for a firm employing a prospective Muslim co-worker, while lower religiosity individuals exhibited no such preferences. Research and practical implications are discussed.

Diversity Climate in Organizations: Current Wisdom and Domains of Uncertainty

“…This tendency, driven by low minority subgroup sample sizes, is problematic owing to well known, racial-ethnic minority disparities in strength of racial-ethnic identification (Gaines et al, 1997;Phinney, 1992), nature of prevailing stereotypes (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2007;Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002), and workplace experiences McKay et al, 2007). Generally, it is also disheartening that the oft-employed social identity theory reasoning has not been extended to other disparaged social 209 Diversity Climate in Organizations groups such as older adults (Redman & Snape, 2006), the disabled (Schur, Kruse, Blasi, & Blanck, 2009), gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered (GLBT) individuals (Button, 2001;Ragins & Cornwell, 2001), obese individuals (King, Shapiro, Hebl, Singletary, & Turner, 2006;Roehling, Roehling, & Pichler, 2007), and religious minorities (King & Ahmad, 2010;King, McKay, & Stewart, 2014).…”

“…In fact, only two individual-level studies (Leslie & Gelfand, 2008;Triana & Garcia, 2009) have examined the extent that diversity climate can mitigate the negative outcomes (i.e., filing of internal gender discrimination claims and negative effects of perceived workplace discrimination on procedural justice) faced by people from disadvantaged groups. Owing to the capacity of supportive diversity climates to improve disparaged workers' employment experiences, it seems fruitful to assess how effective, supportive diversity climates might aid in reducing racial-ethnic discrimination Deitch et al, 2003;Schneider, Hitlan, & Radhakrishnan, 2000), gender bias and sexual harassment (Gutek, Cohen, & Tsui, 1996;Willness, Steel, & Lee, 2007), ageism (Redman & Snape, 2006), disability-based discrimination (Colella & Varma, 2001), weight-based discrimination (King et al, 2006;Roehling et al, 2007), heterosexism (Button, 2001;Ragins & Cornwell, 2001), and religious bias (King & Ahmad, 2010;King et al, 2014). Another limitation of employee-level diversity climate work involves the extent of conceptual and measurement "confusion" regarding what comprises individual-level perceptions of diversity climate.…”

The Impact of Store-Unit–Community Racial Diversity Congruence on Store-Unit Sales Performance

“…Furthermore, our study has limited generalizability as we consider only the effects of racial diversity congruence on business performance. Future research might apply our congruence framework to other dimensions of diversity, such as religion, wherein social identification processes have been shown to perpetuate in-group favoritism and out-group bias (e.g., J. King, McKay, & Stewart, 2014).…”

“…Future research might apply our congruence framework to other dimensions of diversity, such as religion, wherein social identification processes have been shown to perpetuate in-group favoritism and out-group bias (e.g., J. King, McKay, & Stewart, 2014). These intergroup dynamics could have implications for the employee-customer interface and, ultimately, organizational performance.…”

Working While Liberal/Conservative: A Review of Political Ideology in Organizations

“…We argue that there are two distinct reasons for focusing on the effects of political ideology in organizational scholarship rather than simply inferring that it has effects similar to those of religious ideology. The study of religious ideology in the workplace is typically the study of minority groups that tend to be stigmatized in society (King, McKay, & Stewart, 2014). Political identity is distinct from these religious identities, in that being liberal or conservative is only a source of stigma depending on the social context.…”