When is a corporate diversity statement beneficial to an organization’s employer reputation? Based on signaling theory, I test a model that looks at the relationship between diversity statement specificity, executive diversity, organizational diversity reputation, and an organization’s employer reputation. Using publicly available archival data looking at the Fortune 500 companies, their diversity statements and executive teams, and the Forbes lists for best employers and best places for diversity, I show that more specific diversity statements improve an organization’s employer reputation through its impact on diversity-valuing reputation, but only when the firm’s executive diversity is low or moderate, but not when it is high. When executive diversity is high, the diversity statement specificity no longer matters, but rather the executive diversity improves employer reputation through diversity-valuing reputation. These results have implications for both theory and organizations.
