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At the Margins: A Distinctiveness Approach to the Social Identity and Social Networks of Underrepresented Groups
Abstract
Using distinctiveness theory, research shows that the relative rarity of a group in a social context tended to promote members' use of that group as a basis for shared identity and social interaction. Relative majority group members, racial minorities and women in a master of business administration cohort were more likely to make identity and friendship choices within-group. The marginalization of racial minorities individuals' own preferences for same-race friends. By contrast, the marginalization of women resulted more for exclusionary pressures than from their preferences for woman friends.
... Communication with ethnic outgroup colleagues can also serve as a source of social support, particularly in workplace settings that encourage shared goals and collaboration -conditions conducive to positive intergroup contact (Laurence et al., 2018). These interactions often grant minority employees access to the benefits of weak ties, which contrast with the strong, emotionally close connections typically formed within ingroups (Mehra et al., 1998). Weak ties are especially valuable for introducing new information, diverse resources, and opportunities that can aid in professional growth and overall wellbeing (Granovetter, 1973). ...
This study investigates the reciprocal relationship between ethnicity-based communication and ethnic identity among minority employees over time. A week-long diary study was conducted with 261 full-time ethnic minority employees in the United States. Multilevel model results showed that both intra- and inter-ethnic communications were associated with increased social support, which, in turn, contributed to more positive ethnic regard, a key element of ethnic identity. Furthermore, positive ethnic regard led to more intra-ethnic communication, but not inter-ethnic communication, in subsequent interactions. These findings advance our understanding of the dynamics of communication and social identity in the workplace.
... The field disproportionately favored northern and male authorship, and our results also indicated that these authors tended to have the highest centrality scores (Appendices S2 & S4). Other research combining eigenvector centrality with actor attribute data also shows how underrepresented groups (racial minorities, women, etc.) tend to have lower eigenvector centrality and to be structurally marginal in networks (e.g., Mehra et al., 1998). Our results further underscored this inequality, revealing how even ostensibly progressive scholars were embedded in networks and institutions that mirrored broader global disparities. ...
Researchers typically operate in epistemic communities: groups that share common approaches to research agendas and sociopolitical action and define areas of debate. Although productive in their own spheres, a lack of understanding among these communities can undermine scientific progress. Thus, analyzing epistemic communities is important for understanding the politics of knowledge production. Social network analysis sheds light on these dynamics by mapping the collaborative networks that shape academic output. We used 255 publications examined in Apostolopoulou et al.’s review of neoliberal conservation literature and 2135 additional publications in a social network analysis. We compiled a coauthorship network for 318 authors and found a dispersed and polycentric network with low connectivity and relatively small clusters of scholars collaborating within tightly knit groups. Although the structure is conducive to innovation and diversity, building new connections among dispersed coauthor groups could enrich knowledge sharing to drive novel approaches. We identified central actors in building collaborations among communities and communicating ideas across the network. We considered actor attributes, such as gender and geographic location, alongside centrality measures. We found that seventy percent of the 20 authors with the highest betweenness centrality were men, and only one male author was affiliated to an institution in the Global South. Our analysis of thematic clusters in the literature highlighted the spatial patchiness and partialness of the literature across different subfields. Scholars should undertake more work on identified themes in currently excluded geographic regions through effective interdisciplinary collaborations and with local communities of research and practice and grassroots movements. There is a need to strengthen the field's intellectual diversity and to have a deeper engagement with issues of class, gender, and race. This would allow neoliberal conservation to reimagine conservation in ways that are not only environmentally sustainable, but also socially just.
... In tandem, highly communal topics were Peer dynamics and Awareness of underrepresentation. Although past research found that instances of underrepresentation may contribute to feeling isolated and excluded (Ackerman- Barger et al., 2020;Campbell, 2023), the narratives in this study suggest that underrepresentation may also make salient one's connection with their own ethnic group (Mehra, 2023). For emerging adults, it may be that underrepresentation narratives are highly communal because they emphasize belonging to one's ethnic group rather than disconnecting from an out-group. ...
Objective
Narrative identity is a promising approach for understanding the content of individuals' ethnic identities but can be limited by the time‐intensive nature of human coding and the reliance on preestablished coding systems.
Background
The aim of our preregistered study is to elucidate the content of individuals' ethnicity‐related experiences using a novel statistical approach.
Method
We applied structural topic modeling (STM), a natural language processing tool, to narratives written by an ethnically diverse sample of 1149 young adults about a moment they felt aware of their ethnicity.
Results
We identified 14 topics within ethnicity narratives and analyzed how each topic related to both the participant's ethnicity and the human‐coded themes of agency and communion. For example, the topic Gained perspective of structural inequality was associated with greater agency, whereas Peer dynamics was associated with greater communion. Ethnic/cultural celebration was associated with both.
Conclusions
This study introduces STM as a useful tool for extracting topic content in narrative data and demonstrates how the multi‐method assessment of ethnicity narratives provides greater insight into the content of ethnic experiences. These findings contribute to our understanding of contextualized aspects of personality, including the innovative ways we might examine them.
Social capital—the resources and goodwill of network contacts—can be activated to enhance employees’ performance, leadership effectiveness, careers, and overall organizational functioning. Despite years of research highlighting the role of networks in addressing business challenges, organizational solutions still overwhelmingly focus on enhancing individual knowledge and skills or changing formal organizational structures and processes. Shifts in the business environment make adding a social capital lens to the historical human capital lens no longer just “nice to do,” but an imperative. Employees and organizations will benefit from carefully considering network connections and intentional efforts to foster their development and use. By prioritizing intentional connections, organizations can create a virtuous cycle of opportunities and prevent a vicious cycle of overwhelm. This book guides practitioners in revealing novel insights using network analysis and creating impact by developing and leveraging organizational networks. The opening section provides readers with a strong foundation in network science. The remainder of the book includes review chapters and case studies in strategic application areas. Review chapters provide readers with a strong scientific grounding explaining why networks are important for each application area and the likely implications of revealing, developing, and leveraging networks. Cases provide inspiration and opportunities to learn from real-life experiences. Case authors share challenges faced, actions taken, and lessons learned from applying network science within organizations. This book aims to provide clearer links between the insights, actions, and outcomes practitioners can expect when revealing, developing, and leveraging organizational networks, demonstrating the powerful perspective that a social capital lens adds.
Research on social networks and networking has generated critical insights for theories and practices about social action in the work context. These insights mostly derive from two theoretical perspectives: one focuses on the network structures that influence individual actions and outcomes, and the other examines the behaviors that people manifest when they interact with others at work. Through theoretical comparison and development, the goal of this conceptual article is to define, compare, and identify areas for integration of structural and behavioral perspectives on social action. To guide future work, we augment the behavioral focus of networking scholarship with a structural emphasis and vice versa.
Objectives
Generational diversity, increasingly prominent in the composition of the healthcare workforce in rapidly developing countries, has received much attention in practice and research recently. While research has revealed various positive and negative impacts of generational diversity on team functioning, the understanding of the mechanism explaining how generational diversity influences team functioning is still limited. This study in rural Chinese hospitals examines the relationship between (surface-level) generational diversity and (deep-level) perceived similarity and investigates how they influence three teamwork behaviours that importantly determine quality of care, namely speaking up, silence and knowledge sharing.
Design
We adopted a quantitative research design and conducted an online survey to investigate the relationship among generational diversity, perceived similarity, speaking up, silence and knowledge sharing. Multilevel mediation modelling was used to test the hypotheses.
Setting
The study was conducted in four rural Chinese hospitals.
Participants
841 healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals, were included in the study.
Primary and secondary outcome measures
Generational diversity was measured by calculating the average of individuals’ Blau’s indices regarding all the generations for each team. Perceived similarity, speaking up, silence and knowledge sharing were measured by validated questionnaires from literature.
Results
Perceived similarity is positively related to the three teamwork behaviours, that is, speaking up (β=0.56, p<0.01), silence (β=0.39, p<0.01) and knowledge sharing (β=0.54, p<0.01), while generational diversity is not (speaking up: β=0.08, p>0.05; silence: β=0.44, p>0.05; knowledge sharing: β=0.09, p>0.05). As the relationship between generational diversity and perceived similarity is non-significant (β=0.07, p>0.05), perceived similarity does not mediate the relationship between generational diversity and teamwork behaviour.
Conclusion
The findings suggest that increases in generational diversity that result from healthcare workforce strengthening may not impact team behaviours and performance. However, if healthcare workforce strengthening would reduce the perceived similarity in teams, explicit management efforts to mitigate the negative impact on team behaviour and care provision are called for.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the dual mediation role of creativity and academic coping in network efficiency and academic performance, using Folkman and Lazarus’s transactional model of stress. Data were obtained from 39 students taking business administration at a Korean university. Social network analysis was performed to check the ego network of students. The double mediation model was applied to analyze the path from network efficiency to academic performance. The results showed that network efficiency, in relation to the structural hole in social network parameters, was double mediated by creativity and academic coping, which had a positive effect on academic performance. However, the effect of double mediation through avoidance was insignificant. Based on the research results, the theoretical and practical implications for the dual mediation effect of creativity and academic coping were presented.
Male nurses in a psychiatric hospital were compared and contrasted to their female colleagues with respect to their conceptions
of their intra-hospital status and their place in the general stratification system outside the hospital. Within the hospital,
the male nurses differed from the females in their views of the other occupational groups with whom nurses are in contact.
The men's involvement in an occupation usually reserved for women also affected their view of the general stratification system,
especially in terms of a relatively low estimate of their own self-esteem.
In this research alienation, defined as an objective state of isolation from others, is studied among 335 members of five organizations. Four dimensions of isolation are studied: isolation (1) from formal authority, (2) from the network of perceived actual control, (3) from friends, and (4) from highly respected coworkers. As expected, these dimensions of isolation are interrelated, but they do not correlate to the extent anticipated with the subject's professional standing or location in the structure of social relations in the organization.