Page 67 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

RIORDAN, SCHAFFER, STEWART
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making distinctions among other coworkers (Flynn, Chatman, & Spataro,
2001). In fact, social categorizations and ingroup/outgroup distinctions,
based on demographics, are likely to take place even when formal work­
groups or other divisions within the organization have already been estab­
lished (Chatman, Polzer, Barsade, & Neale, 1998; Flynn et al., 2001). As a
result, relational demography theories assert that within workgroups, so­
cial comparison processes based on demographics are likely to take place.
Workgroup members who are demographically dissimilar to the rest of
the group are expected to experience the unfavorable outcomes associated
with being categorized in the outgroup.
Much of the relational demography research has drawn on social iden­
tity and self-categorization theories in an attempt to explain the effects
of dissimilarity on various work-related outcomes (e.g., Chatman et al.,
1998; Chatman & Flynn, 2001; Harrison, Price, & Bell, 1998; Harrison, Price,
Gavin, & Florey, 2002; Jehn, Northcraft, & Neale, 1999; Tsui et al., 1992).
For example, Pelled (1996) examined how dissimilarity with respect to
race, gender, and tenure would affect one's perceptions of group conflict
and performance. Consistent with social identity theory, she found that
gender and tenure dissimilarity were related to higher levels of perceived
conflict, ostensibly as a function of differences and difficulties in commu­
nicating and establishing effective norms across these subgroups (gender
and tenure subgroups), and that these perceptions, in turn, were related
to lower ratings of group performance. She did not find support for the
effects of race dissimilarity.
Some researchers used a combined perspective from both the similarity-
attraction paradigm and social identity and self-categorization theories to
examine relational demography processes (e.g., Zenger & Lawrence, 1989).
For example, Tsui et al. (1992) noted that such theories should be treated
as complimentary. In their study of organizational attachment, they sug­
gested that for an employee who is demographically different from others,
'lower organizational attachment may be a consequence of two possible
processes: (1) social isolation and lower interpersonal attraction due to
attitudinal differences associated with demographic dissimilarity, and (2)
incongruence stemming from one's self-categorization of the group and its
actual demographic composition" (p. 554). Their results showed that race
and age dissimilarity were both negatively related to organizational attach­
ment (lower intentions to stay in the organization). They also found that
race dissimilarity was negatively related to organizational commitment.
Harrison and colleagues (1998, 2002) and Chatman and Flynn (2001)
extended and integrated research on the similarity-attraction hypothesis
and social identity theory by considering the effects of time. These studies
found that early in workgroup formation (or newcomer entry) dissimilar