Every employee embodies manifestations of every demographic that attach to him or her
different minority and majority statuses at the same time. As these statuses are often related to
organizational hierarchies, employees frequently hold positions of dominance and
subordination at the same time. Thus, a given individual's coping strategies (or coping
behavior) in terms of minority stress due to organizational processes of hierarchization,
marginalization and discrimination, are very often a simultaneous coping in terms of more
than one demographic. Research on minority stress mostly focuses on single demographics
representing only single facets of workforce diversity. By integrating the demographics of
age, disability status, nationality, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, and religion into one
framework, the intersectional model proposed in this article broadens the perspective on
minorities and related minority stress in the workplace. It is shown that coping with minority
stress because of one demographic must always be interpreted in relation to the other
demographics. The manifestation of one demographic can limit or broaden one's coping
resources for coping with minority stress because of another dimension. Thus the
manifestation of one demographic can determine the coping opportunities and coping
behavior one applies to situations because of the minority status of another demographic. This
coping behavior can include disclosure decisions about invisible demographics. Therefore
organizational interventions aiming to create a supportive workplace environment and equal
opportunities for every employee (e.g. diversity management approaches) should include
more demographics instead of focusing only on few. (author's abstract)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VIENNA/oai:epub.wu-wien.ac.at:4315 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Köllen, Thomas |
| Publisher | Emerald Group Publishing Limited |
| Source Sets | Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book Section, PeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Relation | http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/S1479-355520140000012000, http://www.emeraldinsight.com/, http://epub.wu.ac.at/4315/ |
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