The scholarly impact of diversity research

Abstract

This study contributes to the diversity literature by probing whether diversity papers are cited as frequently as nondiversity papers in management and industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology journals. Based on the stigma-by-association theory, I argue that as a result of their association with minority groups, diversity papers may be devalued and thus “othered” by scholars. Using a citation analysis of 46,930 papers published in 29 peer-reviewed management and I/O psychology journals, I present empirical evidence in Study 1 that diversity papers were cited significantly less frequently than nondiversity papers. The authors' gender and institutional prestige, journal tier and domain, and year of publication were not moderators. In Study 2, I used a scenario experiment to demonstrate the stigma-by-association effect. The authors' gender demonstrated a significant moderating effect in this experiment.