More or Less Dissimilar: An Additive Approach to Dissimilarity and Inclusion at Work

While the relational demography literature has explored the consequences of surface-level (visible traits like ethnicity and gender) and deep-level (underlying attributes such as work experience) dissimilarity, it remains unclear how being dissimilar across multiple specific dimensions concurrently relates to employees’ perceived inclusion. This study addresses that gap by examining how dissimilarity on specific dimensions relates to perceived inclusion and whether employees perceive less inclusion when they perceive dissimilarity on more dimensions. Additionally, we investigate whether these relationships are contingent on perceptions of organizational climate for inclusion.

We conducted a large-scale survey study comprising 6,319 employees from a Dutch public service organization.

Respondents most frequently reported perceiving dissimilarity from their coworkers in terms of personality, followed by ethnicity/culture, age, work experience, religion, sexual orientation, disability, education level, political orientation and gender (in descending order). Although dissimilarity on some dimensions was unrelated to perceived inclusion, we observed that dissimilarity on a greater number of dimensions was negatively related to perceived inclusion. Moreover, we found that the negative relationships between perceived dissimilarity and perceived inclusion were often mitigated by a positive perception of the organizational climate for inclusion.

This is the first study to assess how the multifaceted nature of dissimilarity on a broad range of dimensions interplays with perceptions of inclusion and organizational climate, highlighting key factors influencing workplace inequality and employee well-being.