The relationships between diversity climate, manager's attitudes, employee's cognitive flexibility and prejudices

Today, the diverse structure of the workforce has made the issue of diversity gain importance in effective human resources management. However, individuals in society and organizations still encounter with negative stereotypes and prejudices due to their sexual orientation, and are exposed to discrimination and even violence. Although this situation brings many problems from health problems to economic difficulties for individuals who encounter with negative attitudes and behaviors, it also causes various losses due to the organization's inability to effectively managing diversity. Although prejudice and discrimination against individuals with different sexual orientations are among the research topics of different disciplines, studies relevant with that topic in Turkey is quite limited. From this point of view, it is aimed to examine the relationship between a set of individual and organizational variables and negative attitudes towards homosexuals. With this aim, the relationships between the attitudes and the action option tendencies of managers towards homosexuals, and the diversity climate perceptions, cognitive flexibility of employees and their attitudes towards homosexuals were examined. Within the scope of the study, first of all, Turkish adaptation studies of the Diversity Perception Scale were carried out in order to measure the perceptions of employees towards diversity climate. Later, data were collected from 54 managers and their 327 employees through the Diversity Perception Scale, the Cognitive Flexibility Inventory, the Attitude towards Homosexuals Scale, and the Action Options Scale towards Homosexuals. The collected data were tested with a research model including education, contact and gender variables. Findings obtained as a result of the analysis showed that the aferomentioned variables predicted the negative attitudes of the employees towards homosexuals and the tested model was statistically significant. The findings of this study, which contributed to the literature by considering the individual and organizational variables related with negative attitudes together and the Turkish adaptation of the Diversity Perceptions Scale, were discussed in the light of the relevant literature.