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Beyond the ballot box: How political identity influences interpersonal judgments at work
Abstract
While research in employee identities continues to garner increased attention, political attitudes and their related behaviors have been largely overlooked. Considering the currently charged political climate in the United States and other areas of the world, we sought to examine how political identities affect the determination to the hire candidates and how willing potential coworkers would be to work with candidates. Guided by social identity theory, through a series of exploratory studies we find support for several tenants of the theory including both a similarity bias for candidates who hold similar political identities as well as reversals of ingroup favoritism in order to avoid the loss of reputation potentially caused from low-quality, politically similar candidates when a more salient social identity is present. Additionally, we find noticeable differences in the effects of political identity and their congruence with those of the raters depending on job position (i.e., HR professional or prospective coworker) as well as participation in other common identities (e.g., employees of all ages or those in a specific age-based peer group). Taken together, our results shed important light on the influence of political identities in organizations and provide fecund opportunities for future consideration.
https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/AMBPP.2018.14563abstract
... In workplaces, ideological polarisation negatively affects firm performance by eroding trust and effective communication between employees and between senior management (Rockey & Zakir, 2020). Empirical studies show that polarisation adversely affects other economic and political decisions, including whom to hire (Gift & Gift, 2015;Griffith et al., 2018;Roth et al., 2020), where to establish a firm (Barber IV & Blake, 2023) and whether to comply with government mandates (Flores et al., 2022;Painter & Qiu, 2021). It is therefore crucial to identify the causes of such disagreements and identify ways that higher education can contribute to addressing workplace and societal issues that stem from ideological polarisation. ...
In many developed countries, disagreement on important policy issues between groups with different social identities (‘ideological polarisation’) is increasing. In professional settings, these disagreements undermine cooperation and trust between employees, which negatively affects work relationships and managerial decision‐making. We investigate whether people with more education tend to express attitudes that are more (or less) polarised. Using nationally representative data for 18 OECD countries from 2010 to 2018, we find that in most countries, ideological polarisation between liberals (political left) and conservatives (political right) on three key policy issues (income inequality, immigration and gay rights) increases with education. This ‘education–polarisation’ gradient varies across countries, is strongest in the United States and is linked to stronger alignment between political ideology and non‐political values, and greater internet use among more‐educated individuals. This finding can explain why polarisation can persist and even increase, despite the growing availability of information. We conclude with implications and recommendations for higher education.
Political polarization has increased significantly in society over the past decade, and whether intended or not, employees at all levels bring their political ideologies into organizations. We posit that political ideology is unique and warrants the attention of organizational scholars. We begin by integrating literature from political science and political psychology to review the various conceptualizations of political ideology as representing values, identity, and political affiliation. Next, we review the literature of political ideology in organizational sciences which has examined political ideology through a values-based lens,understanding it to be a source of motivated reasoning that influences strategic decisions. We then review a smaller subset of literature that has examined political ideology through an identity-based lens, exploring its influence on social dynamics including stereotyping, diversity in teams, and person-organization fit. Finally, we chart a course for future research on political ideology, focusing on (1) conceptual expansions, (2) contextual determinants, (3) diversity, (4) cross-level alignment, and (5) the acknowledgment of possible researcher bias.
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