Signaling as an Antecedent to Identity Management Behaviors in LGB Employees: A Sensemaking Perspective

ABSTRACT Research on the workplace experiences of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) employees has been on the rise steadily in management outlets. One area that has received particular attention is scholarship aimed at understanding how LGB employees manage their sexual orientation identities while at work. We contribute to foundational work in this space by providing insight into the role of signaling one's sexual orientation as the starting point of an identity management progression. Further, we investigate how this progression from one strategy to another might be moderated by contextual incivility. Leveraging two studies comprising a combined 666 LGB employees, we find that signaling is most predictive of subsequent identity management decisions in more hostile climates of contextual incivility (witnessing others being targeted with incivility and a heightened perceived incivility climate) than in more friendly climates. Taken together, our study is among the first to empirically test the potential for identity management progression among LGB employees and to examine how contextual incivility may shape it.