Michàl Mor Barak
University of Southern California
2272 The Terrace, Mountain Gate
Los Angeles CA 90049
USA
Phone: 213-740-2002
FAX: 213-740-0789
Email: morbarak@usc.edu

Purpose:  Diversity and inclusion have been recognized as critical predictors of employee attitudes in the U.S., but these are relatively new concepts in the Korean workforce. Although a few researchers investigated the relationship between diversity, inclusion and work attitudes, no empirical research has not yet been done to link these concepts and job performance. The purposes of this study were to examine the perceptions of diversity and inclusion among Korean employees and investigate how these perceptions influence employees’ attitudes and job performance.

Methods: The present study utilized a cross-sectional design and collected data from employees and their supervisors from a Korean corporation. Employees were asked to reply their perceptions about their corporations and their own work attitudes. Supervisors were asked to evaluate their employees’ performance. Questionnaires were dropped off one day and picked up by researchers one week later. Eight hundred surveys were distributed and 592 were returned. Of those, 496 were fully completed and matched with performance data; thus overall response rate was 62 percent.

Results: Findings indicated that perception of diversity, fairness, inclusion were strongly related to work attitudes among Korean employees. Moreover, work attitudes (job satisfaction, organizational commitment) were associated with job performance. Among these variables, organizational commitment was the most critical variable for job performance. Like U.S culture, gender was the critical diversity characteristics, but unlike U.S culture, region was the critical diversity characteristics. SEM indicated that comprehensive conceptual model fit the data, so model itself can be applied to Korean sample.

Implications for Practice: The results emphasized the importance of employee perceptions regarding their work environments for their work attitudes and performance. Furthermore, this study gave insight into the different diversity characteristics among different cultures. The study can add to the knowledge base by testing the applicability of this model to the Korean workforce.