A Theoretical Exploration of Manager and Employee Social Identity, Cultural Values and Identity Conflict Management

Abstract

Increasingly, members of non-dominant social identity groups are entering the workplace as employees. This shift in the demographics of the workforce is occurring as an outgrowth of a variety of factors including immigration, political disruption, enfranchisement, globalization, and the need for workers in low birth-rate countries. In many countries, these employees are members of social identity groups who are in conflict with ABSTRACT As social identity conflicts based on ethnic origin, religion, caste, and so on, erupt around the globe, we investigate what may happen when these conflicts carry over into the workplace. In this article we explore possible employee responses to an organizational manager when the manager is attempting to prevent or reduce the intensity of social identity conflict in the workplace and the conflict is attributed to relatively non-fluid characteristics of social identity such as ethnicity, nationality, caste, or gender. We propose that employee responses to manager influence depend on: (1) whether the employee and manager are members of the same or different social identity groups, (2) whether the employees are members of the dominant or non-dominant group in the society at large, and (3) the shared influence of the embedded-autonomous cultural dimensions and the hierarchical-egalitarian cultural dimensions. KEY WORDS • cultural values • manager influence • social identity

The effect of ethnic diversity on expatriate managers in their host country

“…Our second theme, ''communication style'', can be linked to Dalton and Chrobot-Mason (2007) who suggested two alternatives for a manager to work around their non-prototypicality. They can emphasise another social identity such as being a member of a professional group, or alternatively emphasise task competence.…”

Modèles de management et stratégies identitaires des salariés : l’exemple des centres d’appels offshore tunisiens

“…Ainsi, lorsqu'on analyse le comportement d'un individu donné, il est nécessaire de prendre en compte les dynamiques culturelles qui existent à la fois au niveau de la nation, du secteur d'activité, de l'organisation et même du groupe ou service dans lequel l'individu se situe. Ce courant est donc particulièrement attentif aux dynamiques d'identités multiples (Lee, 2010) et aux conflits identitaires (Stephan et Stephan, 1985;Dalton et al, 2007).…”

“…Allant dans le sens des travaux de Lee (2010), nous confirmons que pour comprendre le comportement des individus confrontés à des situations de travail multiculturelles, il est nécessaire de prendre en compte non seulement les caractéristiques culturelles nationales, mais aussi les dynamiques culturelles au niveau de l'organisation et de l'individu. Les conflits identitaires décrits par Dalton et al (2007) sont au coeur des dynamiques individuelles. Nos résultats obtenus dans des centres d'appels ont particulièrement mis cela en lumière.…”

Transforming Human Resource Management Systems to Cope with Diversity

“…Byrne's (1971) similarity attraction paradigm has also contributed to this debate with interesting propositions regarding inter-individual perceptions. The basic assumption that underlies these approaches is that individuals' feelings of identification depend on their perceptions of similarity (Chrobot-Mason 2004;Dalton and Chrobot-Mason 2007). In this context, and following Pugh et al (2008), one can argue that heterogeneous groups are less likely to be cohesive than homogeneous ones.…”