Discrimination in the workplace is a widespread issue with far-reaching consequences for employees and organizations. An important strategy for addressing current and preventing future discrimination is confronting (i.e., the verbal challenge directed at the person or persons who commit a blatant or subtle act of discrimination), either by targets themselves or observers. Despite well-meaning intentions, confrontation of discrimination is rare, especially in the workplace. We argue that one barrier to confronting in the workplace is that the requirements for confrontation of discrimination are not yet well understood, partly because we lack a psychometrically sound and comprehensive scale to capture and differentiate the requirements. In a series of five studies (Ntotal = 1,112) across different cultural contexts and populations, we overcome the gaps of existing research in three ways. First, we suggest a comprehensive model of Requirements to Confront Discrimination (RCD) at the workplace encompassing four critical dimensions (i.e., Identifying Discrimination, Personal Necessity to Confront, Confrontation Skills, Confrontation Evaluation). Second, we develop and validate a reliable 12-items scale to measure RCD. Third, we empirically demonstrate the importance of RCD in contemporary workplaces, showing its predictive validity for affective and motivational organizational outcomes. Overall, our work thus sets the foundations to understand what is needed to confront discrimination, and why it is important for organizations to equip their employees with these requirements.
