In human resource management research it has become a highly relevant issue to try to understand the challenges that an online work environment pose for the inclusion of marginalized employees. In this regard, inclusiveness scholars have focused on the role that dissimilarities play for organizational inclusion of employees but rarely on how this takes place through technology-mediated interaction. We integrate notions of identity and communication from inclusiveness and virtual work research to develop a theoretical model depicting two variants of social distance (targeted and diffuse). Subsequently we discuss how these forms of social distance affect different dimensions of inclusiveness. Our analysis suggests that the virtual work environment may weaken some negative aspects of bias and discrimination while strengthening others. Based on such findings we argue for the development of a greater sensitivity to the context in inclusiveness research.

在人力资源管理研究中，试图了解在线工作环境对边缘化员工包容性带来的挑战已成为一个高度相关的问题。在这方面，包容性学者关注的是差异对员工的组织包容性所起的作用，但很少关注这是如何通过技术介导的互动发生的。我们整合了包容性和虚拟工作研究中的身份和沟通概念，以开发一个理论模型来描述社会距离的两种变体（有针对性的和分散的）。随后，我们讨论了这些形式的社会距离如何影响包容性的不同维度。我们的分析表明，虚拟工作环境可能会削弱偏见和歧视的某些消极方面，同时加强其他方面。