2025 Theses Doctoral

To Promote Inclusion or Prevent Exclusion? Inclusive Leadership and Its Impact on Perceptions of East Asian and White Leaders

Leon, Angelica

Despite the growing research on inclusive leadership, there remains a limited focus on how inclusive leaders are perceived. This dissertation examines the impact of different types of inclusive leadership behavior (promoting inclusion or preventing exclusion) on the perceptions of leader positive affect, trust, effectiveness, competence, and inclusiveness. Given the suggested communal and agentic/dominant aspects of promoting inclusion and preventing exclusion behavior respectively, and extant racial stereotype research, a specific focus was taken on East Asian and White leaders in this preliminary research to address this gap.

Thus, this research used a 2 (behavior type: promoting inclusion and preventing exclusion) x 2 (leader race: East Asian and White) between-subjects design. Overall, perception ratings about inclusive leaders were relatively high, regardless of the type of behavior exhibited. The results indicated that enacting different types of inclusive leadership behavior influenced employee perceptions about their leader, such that leaders who promoted inclusion received higher ratings of effectiveness, and marginally higher ratings of positive affect and competence than leaders who prevented exclusion.

While East Asians were trusted and seen as more inclusive than Whites regardless of behavior type, when East Asians promoted inclusion, they received several boosts in perception ratings, particularly for competence, compared to when they prevented exclusion, and compared to Whites who promoted inclusion as well. No penalty was identified for East Asians or Whites who engage in either type of inclusive leadership behavior. Instead, a boost was found for East Asian leaders who promoted inclusion. Additional exploratory analyses indicated that promoting inclusion is seen as more communal than preventing exclusion, although both were perceived as relatively communal and neutrally dominant, which is a novel empirical contribution.

Taken together, this research demonstrates several benefits for leaders who engage in inclusive leadership, supplementing the extant research illustrating robust employee, team and organizational outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.