Exploring the role of psychological empowerment and trust climate in the effectiveness of diversity practices on performance, satisfaction and voice

As work groups have become more diverse over the past three decades, companies have begun to implement business practices that allow them to support these diverse workforces, namely diversity practices. This thesis sets as research aims to define whether (I) such diversity practices promote job performance, job satisfaction, and voice behaviours; (II) the effects of diversity practices on these outcomes are mediated by psychological empowerment and (III) trust climate moderates the effects of diversity practices on psychological empowerment. To address these research aims, a quantitative methodology was used to investigate the above variables through the lenses of power relations theory.



A systematic literature review (n = 254) was conducted to determine whether the existing academic literature had already addressed the defined research objectives. The results revealed that diversity practices affect job performance, job satisfaction and voice, loyalty, exit and neglect behaviours in the short term. However, the literature showed limited evidence on the effects of diversity practices on voice, loyalty and neglect, and few studies had investigated the long-term effects of diversity practices on these outcomes. Furthermore, psychological empowerment and trust climate could mediate the effects of perceived diversity practices on these outcomes, but they were empirically demonstrated in separate studies without testing them as mediators. Yet, no studies had examined whether trust climate moderated the effect of diversity practices on psychological empowerment. Consequently, a three-wave longitudinal research design was developed to fully address the research questions of this thesis. A quantitative longitudinal study was conducted with 332 employees of an Italian telecommunications company. The findings indicated that perceived diversity practices promoted job performance and voice behaviours after one year. In addition, psychological empowerment was found to mediate the effects of perceived diversity practices on contextual performance, job satisfaction, and counterproductive work behaviours. the results also showed that trust climate moderated the effects of diversity practices on psychological empowerment which, in turn, affected job satisfaction.