Gender and Religious Diversity, Task-Related Team Attributes, and Organizational Embeddedness

Abstract

Drawing from the categorization elaboration model, we examine gender and religious diversity as antecedents of organizational embeddedness, including the moderating effects of team-level cognitive diversity and goal interdependence. The study was conducted in Malaysia, a country where religious diversity has become more prominent following a wake of Islamic fundamentalism and that is also less gender-egalitarian than Western societies. Study results found that the main effects of gender and religious diversity were not associated with organizational embeddedness, and that there were no asymmetrical group differences. However, results for moderation showed that cognitive diversity exacerbated an adverse relationship between religious diversity and organizational embeddedness for Muslim employees, but not for non-Muslim employees. Further, goal interdependence weakened an adverse relationship between gender diversity, an effect that was more pronounced for female employees.