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Introduction
Instances of organizational discrimination have been reduced substantially over the past decades where there have been legislation changes; for example, through the introduction of the Employment Equity Act in Canada (Government of Canada, 1995) and affirmative action legislation in the USA (Kurtulus, 2015). While these legislations have been effective in advancing multiculturalism and reducing direct discriminatory practices, discriminatory issues persist indirectly through the form of negative biases and attitudes within the workplace (Dovidio and Hebl, 2005). These indirect forms of discrimination remain problematic as they still affect perceptions of discrimination based on observations of unfair or discriminatory treatment due to demographic group membership, such as ethnicity, gender, age and sexual orientation (Harris et al., 2004; Pascoe and Richman, 2009). Thus, even though direct discrimination may be reduced, an environment of discrimination may still be experienced by employees due to their perceptions of indirect and often subtle discrimination that may be based on an employee’s own experience or on observations of discriminatory instances to members of other demographic groups (Avery et al., 2008).
Perceived organizational discrimination is an issue as it has both direct and indirect costs to employees and to organizations. Perceptions of discrimination in the workplace have adverse impacts on a spectrum of employee outcomes such as psychological well-being, organizational commitment, employee morale, job satisfaction and job performance (Connor and Miller, 2014; Ensher et al., 2001; Goldman et al., 2006; Jang et al., 2008) especially amongst employees who are part of the minority group (Avery et al., 2008). For organizations, perceived discrimination has negative impacts through lower productivity due to individual employee outcomes, as well as potential human rights complaints that can lead to class action lawsuits, often amounting to millions of dollars (James and Wooten, 2006). With increasing diversity in the workforce, it is therefore important to not only manage diversity effectively and reduce direct discriminatory actions, but to also pay attention to employees’ perceptions and beliefs about discrimination.
There is a great deal of literature that addresses issues pertaining to perceived discrimination in the workplace by introducing different management practices or interventions, such as active communication, diversity training, and interaction between leaders and employees (Day and Schoenrade, 2000; Larsen et al., 2013). Employees’ equal...