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The standard way of thinking about employee responses to DEI programmes assumes a simple divide — those who are on board and those who are not. Research by Kanitz and colleagues, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, suggests the picture is more complex.
An employee’s response to a DEI programme can be understood as having three components: what they think, what they feel, and how they act. These are related but not identical. Studies of workplace attitudes have found that ambivalent responses are common — believing in the principles of a programme while feeling uneasy about its implementation, or complying outwardly while resisting in quieter ways. Kanitz and colleagues’ research — a programme of three studies, replicated across different samples — identified four recognisable patterns of employee response, each with different practical implications for how a DEI programme should be communicated and measured.
Kanitz and colleagues examined patterns of response within individuals across three components — cognitive, affective, and behavioural — originally set out by Rosenberg and Hovland (1960) and used extensively since as the basis for research on attitudes. What a person thinks about a DEI programme, what they feel about it, and how they act in relation to it are three distinct kinds of information — and a survey designed to capture meaningful variation in response needs to ask questions about all three.
Research identifies two cognitive dimensions as particularly important in shaping responses to organisational change, and Kanitz and colleagues apply both to DEI specifically. The first is perceived personal benefit — whether an employee believes the programme will produce positive consequences for them. The second is self-efficacy — whether they believe they have the skills and capacity to engage with what the programme requires. The research finds that employees who judge a programme as producing more loss than gain, or who doubt their ability to operate within it, are more likely to resist or disengage.
Research on affect in the workplace distinguishes two dimensions: valence (whether the feeling is positive or negative) and activation (whether it is high or low in arousal). Combining these produces four affective states: positive and high activation (enthusiasm), positive and low activation (comfort), negative and high activation (anxiety), and negative and low activation (despondency). Employees typically experience a combination of these rather than a single dominant feeling — and that combination is often informative on its own.
Research on behavioural responses to organisational change and to diversity has distinguished four patterns along two axes: level of endorsement (supportive versus opposed) and level of activism (active versus passive). This produces active support, passive compliance, passive disengagement, and active resistance. An individual employee’s behaviour does not always sit neatly in one of the four — mixed patterns, in which supportive and resistant behaviours occur together, are common enough to matter.
If responses to DEI programmes were always internally consistent — positive cognitions producing positive affect producing supportive behaviour — the supporters-and-resistors framing would be sufficient. The research suggests it is not. Ambivalent responses, in which employees hold positive and negative orientations at the same time, are common enough that Rothman and colleagues (2017) have described them as “more the norm than the exception” in organisations. An employee can understand why a diversity-related hiring practice makes sense for the organisation while also feeling anxious about what it means for their own prospects. An employee can support the principles of a programme while finding its implementation clumsy or performative.
Treating these employees as resistors misses the point. Their responses are not oppositional; they are mixed. And because the mixture often reflects genuine engagement with the programme’s substance — what is working, what is not, where the gap between intent and delivery sits — it is worth surfacing rather than explaining away.
Kanitz and colleagues used latent profile analysis to identify recurring patterns of cognitive, affective, and behavioural response to DEI initiatives. Four profiles emerged, and each was replicated across the three studies. The profiles differ not just in how positive or negative employees are, but in the shape of their response across the three dimensions.
Excited supporters. Positive across all three dimensions. Believe the programme has value for them, feel enthusiastic about it, and actively support it. Consistently the largest group in the research: around 61% of employees on average across the three studies. These are employees most visibly engaged with the programme — and also the ones most likely to already be reached by existing communications.
Calm compliers. Moderate across all three dimensions. Accept the programme without enthusiasm and comply with its requirements without resistance. The second largest group at around 24% of employees on average. Neither advancing the programme nor undermining it.
Torn shapers. Mixed across the three dimensions. Tend to hold broadly positive cognitions about the programme, combined with both positive and negative affect, and a mixture of supportive and resistant behaviours. Around 10% of employees on average. The research identifies one specific driver of this profile: employees are significantly more likely to fall into it when they perceive the organisation’s motives as control-focused — that is, when they believe the programme is being introduced for compliance, reputational, or cost reasons rather than from genuine commitment. Torn shaper ambivalence is therefore often more a credibility problem than a values problem.
Discontented opponents. Negative across all three dimensions. The smallest group, averaging around 6% of employees. The label can mislead: the research finds this group is not characterised by vocal opposition. Their prohibitive voice — their tendency to raise concerns — is the lowest of any of the four profiles. Their response tends to be behavioural rather than verbal: withdrawal, avoidance, quiet non-participation. A high rate of non-disclosure on demographic questions in a survey is one possible signal of this group, as employees who have disengaged from the programme are also less likely to trust the organisation with personal data.
The four profiles are defined by their pattern across cognitive, affective, and behavioural dimensions. A survey that asks only one or two high-level questions about how employees feel about the DEI programme will not distinguish between the four profiles. Picking up the profile structure requires items across all three dimensions. This does not need to be a long section of the survey — a targeted set of items will usually be enough.
The items below are intended as illustrative examples rather than a fully tested survey measure. The cognitive and behavioural items are adapted from the change-management scales used in Kanitz and colleagues’ research; the affective items are adapted from the IWP Multi-Affect Indicator.
One caveat on the behavioural items: resistance questions in particular tend to be underreported. Employees who look for ways to limit the impact of initiatives are not always willing to say so on a survey, even an anonymous one. Free-text questions help less with the resistance itself and more with what sits around it — the implementation concerns, the doubts about motives, the specific episodes that shape how employees behave.
The profiles are most useful as a guide to where to concentrate effort. Focusing primarily on converting discontented opponents is likely to produce limited returns; they are a small minority, and the research suggests their response is often rooted in deeper value orientations that a DEI communications programme is unlikely to shift. The torn shapers and calm compliers together represent the larger opportunity.
Excited supporters are an asset worth deploying. The research suggests involving them as active catalysts — on steering groups, in champion networks, as co-creators of programme materials — and placing them strategically so their enthusiasm can reach others. The practical risk with this group is not underuse but over-reliance: assuming that because they are engaged, the rest of the organisation is engaged too.
Calm compliers are the group for whom clear, timely information tends to matter most. The research finds that higher-quality information about a DEI programme is associated with more favourable responses — and with calm compliers specifically, good information can support a shift toward more active engagement. This is not about more communication; it is about clearer explanation of why the programme exists, what it is doing, and how it connects to employees’ own work.
Torn shapers are the most informative group and the most important to engage well. Because their ambivalence is often rooted in perceived organisational motives rather than disagreement with the programme’s principles, the useful intervention is dialogue rather than reassurance. The research points to participatory communication — consulting them, taking their concerns seriously, reflecting genuinely on the implementation rather than defending it — as the more productive approach. This is also the group whose feedback is most likely to improve the programme itself. Treating them as a problem to be managed misses what they have to offer.
Discontented opponents require a more careful approach. The research suggests that finding common ground around shared values — fairness, for instance — is a more productive starting point than making the case for the specific programme. It also suggests being realistic about what can be achieved: this group is small, and the effort required to shift them is usually disproportionate to the return. A programme that spends most of its attention trying to convert discontented opponents is probably not spending its attention well.
The supporters-and-resistors binary oversimplifies a more complex picture, and it directs effort in the wrong places — toward converting a small group of discontented opponents who are difficult to shift, and away from the torn shapers and calm compliers where more productive work is possible. A survey designed to distinguish between the four profiles gives a clearer picture of where employees actually sit: who is engaged, who is going along with the programme, and who is signalling that something is not landing.
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