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Besides diversity's positive effects, groups of “we” against “them” may form in accordance with social categorization theory, showing diversity's negative consequences. The authors aim to reconcile these results and examine their boundary conditions.

The authors studied 584 working professionals from five contexts (transnational companies dealing with multicultural interactions) and analyzed data using moderated-mediation procedures.

A leader-promoting diversity climate plays a crucial role in moderating the negative relationship between perceived dissimilarity and group identification, which is mediated by value dissimilarity.

This study mainly contributes by treating dissimilarity as a multicomponent construct, emphasizing the crucial differences embodied in various conceptualizations of dissimilarity – namely visible and value dissimilarity. For dissimilarity to result in group identification, the results highlight leaders' crucial role, beyond that of organizations and individuals, in stimulating a diversity-embracing climate in work units.

The purpose of this paper is to extend current discussion on the drivers of innovative work behavior (IWB) by exploring how individual perceived diversities (visible dissimilarity and cognitive group diversity) and climates (team/clan and innovative/entrepreneurial) impact IWB.

Data had been collected from a cross-national study of working professionals (n = 584) from five different cultural contexts.

Findings of this study indicated that cognitive group diversity mediated the negative relationship between visible dissimilarity and IWB. Further, both innovative/entrepreneurial and team/clan climates moderated the relationship between visible dissimilarity and cognitive group diversity. Such a moderation effect reduced the negative effect that visible dissimilarity had on IWB.

A cross-sectional single-source data set.

From a managerial perspective, climates (team/clan and innovative/entrepreneurial) are central for IWB in the diverse (visible and cognitive) working environment. Thus, organizations should pay attention to create a climate (team/clan or/and innovative/entrepreneurial) that reduces the negative impact of perceived diversity in the working environment while supporting IWB.

This study is the first of its kind that is based on social categorization theory, empirically examining how different types of diversity (visible dissimilarity and cognitive group diversity) simultaneously reduce individuals’ IWB. Furthermore, this paper provides insights that climates (team/clan and innovative/entrepreneurial) are crucial for IWB in the diverse working environment.

In this quasi‐experimental study we investigate value congruence and demographic dissimilarity among group members as factors which influence various types of conflict within workgroups. We also examine whether it is beneficial for members to be different or alike, to agree or disagree, in order to foster work group productivity. Results indicate that visible individual demographic differences (i.e., sex, age) increase relationship conflict, while informational demographic differences (i.e., education) increase task‐focused conflict. Value congruence of members decreased both relationship and task conflict, and the specific content of the values held by members influenced performance. Specifically, both detail and outcome group value orientations increased objective performance; outcome, decisiveness, and stability orientations increased perceptions of high performance; and both decisiveness and supportiveness orientations increased the satisfaction level of group members while a team orientation decreased individual member satisfaction in this sample.

The increasing social media use has been widely recognized for its adverse effects, such as social media fatigue. With the continuously increasing friends on social media, the dissimilarity of individuals in terms of age, personality, and values has increased. It is unclear whether perceived dissimilarity with others is associated with social media fatigue. The authors attempted to bridge this gap by constructing a “perception–emotion–behavioral” research framework. This study investigated the influence of individual perceived dissimilarity on social media fatigue. The authors further investigated the mechanisms mediating the three dimensions of social anxiety in the model.

This study examined the mechanisms by which individual perceived dissimilarity influences social media fatigue, particularly using WeChat application. A field survey study conducted in China with 408 subjects of WeChat app users was used in this study to analyze the study model.

The obtained results demonstrate that individual perceived dissimilarity has a significant positive effect contributing to social media fatigue, perceived dissimilarity is positively correlated to social anxiety. Social anxiety positively affects social media fatigue, and social anxiety partially mediates the positive effect between perceived dissimilarity and social media fatigue.

First, the study confirmed the influence of perceived dissimilarity on social media fatigue, which may enrich the antecedent mechanisms of social media fatigue. Second, the authors demonstrated the social anxiety-mediated development of fatigue. The findings provide an in-depth understanding of users' fatigue. Third, the findings of this study provide valuable insights for preventing of social media fatigue.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how perceived visible, work value, and informational dissimilarity affect an individual's helping behavior. Additionally, it investigates the moderating roles of the need for affiliation and need for achievement.

A theoretical analysis was performed.

It is proposed that perceived visible, work value, and informational dissimilarity will have a negative impact on an individual's helping behavior. Additionally, it is posited that the need for affiliation and need for achievement will positively moderate the negative relationship between perceived dissimilarity and helping behavior.

This paper provides additional insight into antecedents of helping behavior, and offers a theoretical basis for future research that examines the relationship between subjective diversity and discretionary behaviors in organizations.

This paper has several important implications. First, managers are recommended to implement effective educational approaches, such as role-playing, that help eliminate employees’ negative perceptions of dissimilarity and promote willingness to help co-workers. Second, managers should reinforce shared vision, values, and goals, which in turn may encourage interpersonal cooperative behaviors. Third, managers should facilitate the dissemination of knowledge and information that are crucial to individual performance. Fourth, managers are encouraged to provide employees with trainings on effective interpersonal processes such as inclusion and emotional management. Finally, managers should increase the degree of task interdependence, which may promote high levels of helping behavior.

This paper is one of the very few studies that link helping behavior with subjective perceptions of dissimilarity. More importantly, this paper highlights the importance of the interaction between dissimilarity perceptions and internal driving forces.

We aim to explore whether demographic groups of varying status positions differ in terms of their perception of work group members’ openness to deep-level and surface-level diversity. We also explore the effect that task group conflict and relational group conflict have on perceptions of openness to diversity.

Quantitative analysis of responses from 489 academics in multicultural university departments is applied. A comparison is made of different demographic groups based on age, nationality, and seniority with regard to perceptions of work group members’ openness to diversity. Specifically, we focused on perceptions of the work group’s openness to value dissimilarity (deep-level) and openness to visible dissimilarity (surface-level).

We found that there are indeed differences between demographic groups with regard to perceptions of the work group’s openness to value dissimilarities. No significant differences could be found in relation to openness to visual dissimilarities for any of the demographic sub-samples. We also found that there were differential effects of contextual adverse circumstances in the form of relational group conflict and task group conflict on the perceptions of the two types of work group openness to diversity.

The knowledge that different demographical groups perceive their peers’ openness to diversity differently is an important insight when decisions regarding diversity issues have to be taken.

Few studies have focused on perceptions of diversity. This is an important omission because individuals often act upon their perceptions, rather than on objective reality.

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the field of diversity studies with novel insights on how language diversity and communication frequency influence dissimilarity attitudes.

The authors examine language diversity and communication frequency as group‐level antecedents for positive dissimilarity attitudes by use of questionnaire responses from 489 members of academic culturally diverse departments.

The results showed that communication frequency has strong positive relationships with three variables depicting positive dissimilarity attitudes, namely openness to linguistic, visible and informational diversity. Contradicting our predictions, language diversity had positive associations with all variables portraying positive dissimilarity attitudes. The implications of these findings are discussed in detail.

Few prior studies have dealt with the relations between language, communication and dissimilarity attitudes.

Post‐secondary educational organizations are currently some of the most diverse settings to be found. However, few educational studies have dealt with staff diversity and hardly any has looked outside the USA. The purpose of this paper is to present a study of members of international university departments in Denmark. The authors set out to investigate the relationship between different types of staff diversity and openness to diversity in terms of linguistic, visible, value, and informational heterogeneity.

This study uses responses from 489 staff members from diverse university departments to a self‐report electronic survey.

It was found that diversity‐related internationalization (cultural and linguistic) was generally positively related to favorable diversity attitudes. Inherent demographic diversity (age and gender), on the other hand, was unrelated or negatively associated with positive diversity attitudes.

Few studies deal with the role of staff diversity and no prior studies the authors know of have examined the link between diversity types and openness to diversity.

Drawing from moral exclusion theory, this study aims to examine a moderated mediation model for the relationship between perceived overqualification (POQ) and knowledge-hiding behavior directly and via perceived dissimilarity.

Using the convenience-sampling technique, time-lagged (three waves) data were gathered from 595 employees working in different hotels and event management firms. Hayes’ PROCESS macro was used to test the moderated mediation model.

Results showed that perceived dissimilarity among coworkers mediated the result of POQ on knowledge-hiding behavior. In addition, interpersonal disliking moderated the indirect effect in a way that this effect was strong when interpersonal liking was low.

Findings suggest that organizations should make the overqualified realize that they can also learn from their coworkers whom they perceive as less qualified. In this, the feelings of dissimilarity and disliking can be minimized that in turn may decrease the intention to hide knowledge.

The present study offers a new perspective for identifying the nexus between POQ and knowledge-hiding behavior by drawing upon moral exclusion theory and examining the mediating role of perceived deep-level dissimilarity.

Despite the increasingly common view that online brand community (OBC) members are heterogeneous, knowledge concerning the impact of group heterogeneity on community and brand level outcomes is lacking. In response and drawing from organization research, this paper aims to study the consequences of two types of group heterogeneity (i.e. visible heterogeneity and value heterogeneity) on brand community commitment and brand commitment. The moderating role of tenure in a community is also examined.

A survey of 467 members of OBCs was conducted, and structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses.

The results show that perceived visible heterogeneity positively affects brand community commitment, whereas perceived value heterogeneity has a negative effect on it. Brand community commitment positively relates to brand commitment; it also mediates the effect of perceived visible heterogeneity and perceived value heterogeneity on brand commitment. Further, the positive effect of visible heterogeneity on brand community commitment is stronger for short-tenure members, but the negative effect of value heterogeneity is stronger for long-tenure members.

The findings suggest that managers should make efforts to foster visible heterogeneity and reduce value heterogeneity. In addition, managers are advised to emphasize the characteristics that carry different appeal for members of different tenure.

This research is one of the first few quantitative studies to examine the influence of brand community heterogeneity on community, and especially brand level outcomes. It extends the literature on the effect of brand community on brands and adds to the emerging heterogeneity view of OBCs.