Page 69 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

RIORDAN, SCHAFFER, STEWART
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to age, gender, race, and education, will likely have more interpersonal
variability in perspectives, values, and biases (because of demographic
differences), and will thus have more obstacles to overcome as it works to­
ward achieving task-related objectives. Groups with similar members will
be able to focus on such objectives with fewer distractions impeding their
progress.
Several studies in relational demography have used the similarity-
attraction paradigm to generate and test hypotheses. Hinds and colleagues
(2000) examined individuals' preferences to work with others who were
similar to them in race and gender. People had a strong preference for
working with others of the same race, but no support was found for the
expectation that people would prefer working with others of the same gen­
der. Elvira and Cohen (2001) predicted that turnover would be lower for
women from a large financial firm when there were higher proportions
of women employed at their job level. Results supported the similarity-
attraction paradigm among women within the same organizational level.
However, turnover was not influenced by the proportion of women above
and/or below the target's rank, indicating relative rank within the orga­
nization was an important contextual factor negating similarity-attraction
processes. Kirchmeyer (1995), in her study of Canadian managers, showed
that employees who were most dissimilar in terms of age, education, and
lifestyle perceived the lowest levels of job challenge and workgroup fit,
consistent with similarity-attraction. However, gender dissimilarity was
associated with higher job challenge, and cultural dissimilarity was not re­
lated to any of the job experiences. Wagner et al. (1984) discussed similarity-
attraction in terms of its importance in a relational sense. Using the premise
that similarity is a key factor in interpersonal attraction, and that interper­
sonal attraction is related to integration and ultimately turnover, Wagner
et al. (1984) predicted that top management team members who are more
similar to the group (in terms of age and date of organizational entry)
would be less likely to leave the organization. They found partial support
for this prediction. Age dissimilarity was related to higher turnover.
Although many studies have drawn on the similarity-attraction
paradigm to explain the effects of relational demography, most have failed
to examine the mechanisms behind these relationships (Riordan, 2000).
Based on the theory, the obvious intervening variable that would be ex­
pected to play a role is liking, or attraction. We were able to identify only
one study to date that has examined the intervening role of this variable.
Riordan and Weatherly (1999) found that liking mediated the relationship
between education similarity and perceptions of group organizational citi­
zenship behaviors, specifically, group altruism and civic virtue.