Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus
A purported downside of social category diversity is decreased relationship focus (i.e., one’s focus on establishing a positive social bond with a coworker). However, we argue that this lack of relationship focus serves as a central mechanism that improves information processing even prior to intera...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/87776 |
| _version_ | 1826214179413950464 |
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| author | Loyd, Denise Lewin Wang, Cynthia S. Phillips, Katherine W. Lount, Robert B. |
| author2 | Sloan School of Management |
| author_facet | Sloan School of Management Loyd, Denise Lewin Wang, Cynthia S. Phillips, Katherine W. Lount, Robert B. |
| author_sort | Loyd, Denise Lewin |
| collection | MIT |
| description | A purported downside of social category diversity is decreased relationship focus (i.e., one’s focus on establishing a positive social bond with a coworker). However, we argue that this lack of relationship focus serves as a central mechanism that improves information processing even prior to interaction and, ultimately, decision-making performance in diverse settings. We introduce the construct of premeeting elaboration (i.e., the extent to which individuals consider their own and others’ perspectives in the anticipation of an interaction) and explore its link with social category diversity and relationship focus. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that when disagreement occurs, social category diversity increases premeeting elaboration, with relationship focus as a central causal mechanism. Experiment 3 shows that premeeting elaboration has important implications for performance: disagreeing dyads with social category diversity elaborate more prior to meeting and, as a result, perform better on a decision-making task than those with social category homogeneity. We discuss the value of studying early-stage interaction and propose a reconsideration of the “downside” of social category diversity. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:01:20Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/87776 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:01:20Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/877762022-10-02T05:44:30Z Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus Loyd, Denise Lewin Wang, Cynthia S. Phillips, Katherine W. Lount, Robert B. Sloan School of Management Loyd, Denise Lewin A purported downside of social category diversity is decreased relationship focus (i.e., one’s focus on establishing a positive social bond with a coworker). However, we argue that this lack of relationship focus serves as a central mechanism that improves information processing even prior to interaction and, ultimately, decision-making performance in diverse settings. We introduce the construct of premeeting elaboration (i.e., the extent to which individuals consider their own and others’ perspectives in the anticipation of an interaction) and explore its link with social category diversity and relationship focus. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that when disagreement occurs, social category diversity increases premeeting elaboration, with relationship focus as a central causal mechanism. Experiment 3 shows that premeeting elaboration has important implications for performance: disagreeing dyads with social category diversity elaborate more prior to meeting and, as a result, perform better on a decision-making task than those with social category homogeneity. We discuss the value of studying early-stage interaction and propose a reconsideration of the “downside” of social category diversity. Kellogg School of Management 2014-06-13T17:10:02Z 2014-06-13T17:10:02Z 2012-07 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1047-7039 1526-5455 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/87776 Loyd, Denise Lewin, Cynthia S. Wang, Katherine W. Phillips, and Robert B. Lount. “Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus.” Organization Science 24, no. 3 (June 2013): 757–772. en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1120.0761 Organization Science Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) SSRN |
| spellingShingle | Loyd, Denise Lewin Wang, Cynthia S. Phillips, Katherine W. Lount, Robert B. Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus |
| title | Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus |
| title_full | Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus |
| title_fullStr | Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus |
| title_full_unstemmed | Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus |
| title_short | Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus |
| title_sort | social category diversity promotes premeeting elaboration the role of relationship focus |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/87776 |
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