Business leadership and diversity: The relationships between team diversity climate, leaders' diversity attitudes, and leadership styles

This study examined business leaders' color-blind racial attitudes and universality-diversity orientation and their relationships to group members' perceptions of diversity climate and transformational leadership. This study provided empirical evidence that transformational leadership is predictive of higher ratings of perceptions of organizational fairness and team support of multiculturalism.; A web-based survey was conducted at a medium-sized, for-profit wireless technology business in the Midwest. Out of all 749 members who were invited to participate, 78 leaders and 205 of their followers (group members) provided complete data. Regression analyses were concentrated at the group level. There were sixty (n = 60) groups consisting of at least one leader and one group member. Two models were developed for testing the relationships between transformational leadership, leader diversity attitudes and group members' perceptions of diversity climate. The first model proposed that leadership style acted as a partial mediator between leader's diversity attitudes and group members' perceptions of diversity climate. The second model proposed that leaders' diversity attitudes and leadership styles independently predicted diversity climate.; Results suggested that groups within the same organization rate the diversity climate differently and that gender and race-ethnic differences existed in perceptions of diversity climate. Differences between groups were found on five of the ten dimensions of diversity climate. Results included positive correlations between group heterogeneity in race/ethnicity and group ratings of diversity climate. It was shown that leaders' diversity attitudes were predictive of two dimensions of diversity climate. Finally, results support Model 2, showing that leadership styles and leaders' diversity attitudes were independently predictive of diversity climate, and that transformational leadership had the strongest predictive relationship with team support of multiculturalism.; Together, results suggested that organizations, educators, and consultants should assess, and train positive diversity attitudes and transformational leadership styles of business leaders to help create healthier diversity climates in organizations. In addition, helping transformational leaders develop their own multicultural competence and in their followers (group members) will help leaders to transform their organizations into more multiculturally competent organizations.