What is it about?
Hospitality firms adopted diverse hiring policies and public declarations of support of LGBTQ+ causes through brand activism. Our experiment showed that gay hospitality leaders hired during activism campaigns are more likely to be perceived as token hires by male hospitality employees compared to female employees. Also, male hospitality employees may see the company’s motives for hiring a gay leader as more egoistic than female employees. These effects are not observed for a lesbian female leader. Results from follow-up interviews with LGBTQ+ managers and executives suggest that hospitality, travel, and tourism LGBTQ+ employees predominantly take the post-gay vs. political approach when managing their sexual identities at work and feel ambivalent toward LGBTQ+ brand activism and token-hiring.
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Why is it important?
Corporate LGBTQ+ activism backlash in 2023 suggests the need for more thoughtful support of LGBTQ+ causes that is evidence based and aligned with corporate values.
Perspectives
With this article, my co-authors and I wanted to address the topic of diversity hiring in hospitality and tourism from two different angles. I hope that this article, though complex, will invite you to think about the practices that make the hospitality workplace inclusive for all, beyond the rainbow-flagged social media posts or taglines. I am deeply thankful for the support of the International LGBTQ+ Travel Association in writing this article.
Vanja Bogicevic
New York University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Tokenism in the workplace: does brand activism benefit LGBTQ+ employees in the hospitality industry?, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, July 2023, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/ijchm-11-2022-1366.
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