Open workplace climate and psychological experiences of LGB employees in China

Heterosexism is defined as "an ideological system that denies, denigrates, and stigmatizes any nonheterosexual form of behavior, identity, relationship, or community&x201D;(Herek, 1990) and from an institutional perspective, the institution of workplace heterosexism refers to take-for-granted discriminatory behaviors and policies against sexual minorities in the workplace(cf. Ragins and Cornwell 2001, Ragins et al. 2003).Heterosexism is common in the organizations, and whether, or how LGB employees are affected, respond to and attempt to change is still not well understood. For example: how heterosexism impact decision makers in organizations against LGB employees in promotion decisions? How LGB employees respond to the heterosexism with regard to psychological experiences(i.e., job satisfaction and job anxiety) and leader behavior? And how LGB employees attempt to change the status quo of heterosexism? To advance our understanding of heterosexism in the organizations, this symposium, drawing on three empirical and one conceptual paper, will examine the effects of heterosexism on LGB employees as well as how they respond to and attempt to change the heterosexism in the organizational settings. The papers in the symposium provide theoretical syntheses from different perspectives and rich empirical evidence from various industries in North America and China to theorize and document the processes by which LGB employees and their counterpart respond to and change the heterosexism. In this regard, it represents a move away from past scholarship that emphasized the employees' behavior from discrimination to a more holistic understanding of heterosexism in the organizations. Keywords: heterosexism, LGB, discrimination, prejudice.