Purpose: Perceived inclusion refers to employees’ perception of their inclusion status in the workplace. This concept offers a new perspective to understand employees’ experiences within today’s complex working environment. However, research on how perceived inclusion influences employee behavior is lacking. The purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanism of perceived inclusion through the lens of the social exchange perspective and role identity theory.Design/methodology/approach: Survey data were collected from 257 employees and 60 supervisors in a manufacturing company. Multi-level structural equation modeling and the Monte Carlo method were applied to test the mediation effect.Findings: The results indicated that employees’ perceived inclusion was positively associated with job role and innovator role performance through the mediation of organizational commitment. Perceived inclusion was also directly associated with team role performance.Originality/value: This is the first study to empirically examine perceived inclusion in the workplace from the social exchange and role identity perspective. It revealed that perceived inclusion fosters employees’ commitment toward the organization, which in turn influences their work-role behaviors. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.

Scholars have paid extensive attention to transformational leadership for decades. However, existing studies still lack ample discussions on the underlying mechanism and boundary conditions of its influence on employee job satisfaction. This study proposed a moderated mediation model based on social exchange theory. We collected survey data from 211 frontline employees to verify our hypotheses. The results showed that transformational leadership was positively associated with employee job satisfaction via the mediation role of the perceived employee relations climate. Furthermore, the relationship between transformational leadership and the employee relations climate, as well as the indirect relationship between the two, was demonstrated to be more significant for male employees. This study offered a new account of the mechanisms of transformational leadership and clarified a boundary condition for its effectiveness.

Purpose: This paper aims to apply and integrate the existing literature of inclusion to develop a multi-level theory of organizational inclusion for the more and more diverse workforce.Design/methodology/approach: This paper first analyzes the issue of workforce diversity in China, and then reviews the concept of organizational inclusion. After that, this paper develops a multi-level model of organizational inclusion catering to Chinese diversity issue.Findings: This paper outlines a series of propositions on how organizational, group, interpersonal and individual factors affect inclusion at both organizational and individual levels, and the consequences of inclusion in the workplace.Originality/value: This paper is the first research to discuss the inclusion management in Chinese context. This paper proposes a multi-level theoretical model of organizational inclusion to guide empirical studies on the integration of the diversity in workplace in China.