Diversity climate, defined as shared beliefs about how people in an organization approach demographic diversity, has received increasing attention from scholars. However, the existing literature tends to conflate different dimensions of diversity climate. As a result, the dimensionality of diversity climate remains unclear, which has impeded theory development on the consequences of diversity climate. In the current study, we develop and validate a multidimensional measure of diversity climate that includes more dimensions than have been accounted for in prior work. We first identify different dimensions of diversity climate based on the literature and generate items to measure each (Phase 1). We then explore the items’ factor structure and content validity and used the results to finalize a 24-item measure of diversity climate that includes six dimensions (Phase 2). Finally, we confirm the items’ factor structure in three samples and further validate the measure by assessing its convergent and discriminant validity (Phase 3). We contribute to the literature by demonstrating that the diversity climate construct includes a larger number of dimensions than has been identified in prior work and by providing a validated measure that future studies can use to develop and test theory on the potentially divergent consequences of different diversity climate dimensions.
