Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome: language and national culture diversity messages as strategic recruiting tools for diverse organizations

Globalization increases national culture and language diversity, which, if well managed, can benefit organizational performance. National culture is comprised of both language and country of origin, yet until relatively recently research has tended to focus on one or the other. We use person-organization fit theory and the meaning-based model of advertisement experience to propose that other-group orientation, a characteristic supportive of a pro-diversity climate, influences the relationship between language and national culture diversity recruiting messages and perceived person-organization fit. We used two randomized field experiments, one with 458 currently or recently employed people and one with 327 real job seekers, to test our model. Language and national culture diversity messages independently decreased perceived fit among those lower in other-group orientation and increased perceived fit among those higher in other-group orientation. A combined language and national cultural diversity message had the strongest effect by both decreasing fit perceptions among job seekers lower in other-group orientation and increasing fit perceptions among those higher in other-group orientation. These results refine both existing theory on and the practice of recruiting for pro-global diversity values by demonstrating that the relationship between recruiting message wording about an employer’s pro-national culture and pro-language diversity values and person-organization fit is moderated by other-group orientation. These findings can help employers better understand how recruiting messages can play a strategic role in hiring pro-global diversity talent.