LGBT Workplace Equality Policy and Customer Satisfaction: The Roles of Marketing Capability and Demand Instability

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Abstract

A lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workplace equality policy (LGBT-WEP) helps signal and reinforce the organizational commitment to workplace equality and diversity. Prior evidence suggests that LGBT-WEP is viewed favorably by stakeholders (customers, employees, and channel partners) and influences firm performance. Drawing on stakeholder theory and the resource-based view of the firm, the authors examine whether LGBT-WEP influences customer satisfaction through marketing capability and whether demand instability dampens these associations. To alleviate endogeneity concerns of LGBT-WEP, they exploit the plausibly exogenous state-to-state variations in workplace equality policies determined by statewide laws on nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation. Empirical results indicate that LGBT-WEP positively influences customer satisfaction both directly and through enhanced marketing capability. Demand instability, however, dampens these associations. Additional analyses with alternate measures of key variables, alternate distributional assumption, and alternate model specifications yield consistent results.

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The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations.

Reuben M. Baron, David A Kenny (1986)

In this article, we attempt to distinguish between the properties of moderator and mediator variables at a number of levels. First, we seek to make theorists and researchers aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ. We then go beyond this largely pedagogical function and delineate the conceptual and strategic implications of making use of such distinctions with regard to a wide range of phenomena, including control and stress, attitudes, and personality traits. We also provide a specific compendium of analytic procedures appropriate for making the most effective use of the moderator and mediator distinction, both separately and in terms of a broader causal system that includes both moderators and mediators.