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Introduction
Developed in education and social work research, the concept of perceived inclusion has received attention in management research in recent decades (Tang et al., 2015). Perceived inclusion refers to employees’ perception that they are accepted and recognized in the workplace, and scholars believe that inclusion reflects employees’ positive experience and psychological satisfaction in the organization (Mor Barak and Cherin, 1998). Research on ostracism also supports the notion that inclusion-related feelings are key to employees’ psychological satisfaction and performance (Robinson et al., 2013). However, most extant literature on perceived inclusion has either discussed the benefit of inclusion with conceptual propositions or studied the relationship between inclusion and employee outcomes. Few empirical studies have revealed the mechanism of how perceived inclusion affects employees’ work-related behaviors (Jansen et al., 2014; Mor Barak and Cherin, 1998; Oswick and Noon, 2014; Shore et al., 2011).
Previous research on perceived inclusion has largely been conducted in contexts of diversity (Mor Barak, 2017); for example, studies have examined perceived inclusion among minorities or people with disabilities (Fujimoto et al., 2014; Priola et al., 2014). Using social identity theory, the literature explains why a certain group of people have stronger or weaker feelings of inclusion and how those feelings foster positive psychological status (e.g. self-esteem) among employees in the workplace (Mor Barak et al., 1998). Nevertheless, heavily relying on social identity theory narrows the implications of perceived inclusion for interpersonal or relational outcomes, and social identity theory only offers one explanation relating to the diversity issue (Cottrill et al., 2014). Although Shore et al. (2011) start to discuss inclusion beyond the diversity context, empirical studies seldom touch on this point. To increase our knowledge of perceived inclusion, we refer to social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) and role identity theory (McCall and Simmons, 1978; Stryker and Burke, 2000) in the discussion and propose a mediation model that links perceived inclusion to role-based performance. We contend in particular that role identity theory, which focuses on roles instead of categories (Stryker and Burke, 2000), can help to broaden the implications of inclusion in a diversity context to the context of work-related roles, thus offering more explanations and empirical evidence to understand how perceived inclusion affects employees’...