Incorporating a rainbow flag into a company's website logo during Pride Month seems less meaningful to LGBTQ+ employees and customers than gestures of solidarity at other times of the year, new Cornell research finds.
Timing - not just content - influences whether expressions of allyship are perceived as authentic, according to "When You Say It: How the Timing of LGBTQ+ Allyship Displays Shapes Evaluations of Organizations," published Jan. 10 in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
In six experiments totaling nearly 3,000 participants, LGBTQ+ participants consistently rated advocacy as more genuine when it was displayed outside of annual Pride Month celebrations in June, perceiving it to be motivated more by real values than corporate strategy. Those perceptions could influence stakeholders' feelings of belonging or commitment to an organization, the researchers said.
Sensitivity to timing did not extend beyond the target audience, however. Straight, cisgender participants, including those of color, perceived the messages as equally authentic regardless of when they were issued, indicating there is no "one-size-fits-all" approach.
"The context of when a statement or display of allyship is made matters, not just what's in the actual statement," said corresponding author James T. Carter, assistant professor of organizational behavior in the ILR School. "There's not one way to do LGBTQ+ allyship, but more importantly, there's not only one time to do it. Celebrations of culture and community need not be relegated to one point in time but can be done in a more balanced way."
Michael W. White, a doctoral candidate at Columbia Business School, is a co-author.
Allyship research to date has focused on the content of messages, particularly those directed at people of color, but the LGBTQ+ community has been understudied in management research, the authors said. Through statements, ads and social media posts, companies may wish to explicitly express support for LGBTQ+ rights as a reflection of their values - or to avoid alienating a $1 trillion market globally.
In a first field study, patrons of a gay bar rated a fictional company's allyship statement, randomly assigned to show a release date during Pride Month or another month. Those seeing a statement not linked to Pride Month viewed it as more authentic. A follow-up study asked patrons of a queer-owned women's sports bar to reflect on a time their own organization had demonstrated solidarity during Pride or another month, with similar results. One employee favorably recalled an exhibition that featured queer artists, while another described a rainbow-themed online logo as a nice gesture but "kind of performative more than anything."
Two more experiments explored why timing might be important to conveying authenticity. LGBTQ+ participants who watched an ad featuring a transgender woman dancer and LGBTQ+ rights advocate judged it differently depending on its timing, rating the same ad as motivated more by strategy than values when released during Pride Month. And LGBTQ+ employees who recalled an allyship display outside of Pride Month reported stronger feelings of belonging and commitment to their organization.
"LGBTQ+ people saw allyship efforts outside of Pride Month as more values-driven," Carter said, "and that influenced the extent to which they perceived these efforts to be authentic displays of solidarity."
A final pair of experiments tested the limits of timing's importance. Results showed that straight participants, whether white or a racial minority, didn't view statements outside of Pride Month as more authentic. Timing mattered most to the LGBTQ+ target audience - dynamics Carter expects would apply to other groups during other commemorative months.
"Not everyone thinks these allyship displays during designated celebration months are less authentic," Carter said. "There's something about your target identity being relevant to the perception of these allyship cues."
The research does not imply that organizations should avoid expressing LGBTQ+ allyship during Pride Month, Carter said. Rather, they would reap greater rewards from consistent, year-round messaging more likely to be seen as reflecting core beliefs. For example, a message released during Women's History or Black History months might also celebrate LGBTQ+ representatives from those groups, or a speaker series could feature LGBTQ+ issues at any time.
"These findings challenge the assumption that allyship efforts are universally well-received," Carter said, "pushing allies to keep in mind that it is not just what and how you say something, but also when you say it."
The research received support from the ILR School and Columbia Business School's Bernstein Center for Leadership and Ethics.
