CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

182 JEHN, BEZRUKOVA, AND THATCHER
ory, social identity theory, the similarity attraction paradigm, and a cognitive
resource perspective. Self-categorization theory posits that individuals
classify themselves and others into familiar categories in order to make
predictions about subsequent interactions. These categorization groupings
(e.g., female or engineer) are also used in defining an individual’s social
identity (Turner, 1987). Individuals categorize themselves and others into
in-groups and out-groups and then base part of their social identity on
the characteristics of their in-group (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). These categorization
processes are likely to give rise to stereotypes, prejudice, and outgroup
discrimination that can further lead to conflict (e.g., Jehn et al., 1999;
Pelled, Eisenhardt, & Xin, 1999). The similarity attraction paradigm argues
that people are attracted to others who are similar to themselves (Byrne,
1971). Diversity researchers have used the similarity attraction paradigm
to describe how demographic characteristics provide a means of determining
similarity, leading to communication that is more frequent and a desire
to remain in the group (Lincoln & Miller, 1979). In addition, the similarity
attraction paradigm also suggests that individuals will apply negative
assumptions to those with whom they are dissimilar (Byrne, 1971). Finally,
a cognitive resource perspective suggests that diversity facilitates a more
complex problem-solving process, that is, a higher quality of decision making
from different experiences and perspectives that group members bring
to their team (Gruenfeld, Mannix, Williams, & Neale, 1996).
While dispersion theories of group composition base predictions of
group processes and outcomes on the degree to which members are different
based on demographic characteristics (e.g., race, gender, and tenure),
they fall short of taking into account the interdependence among multiple
forms of diversity. The heterogeneity concept captures the degree to which
a group differs on only one demographic characteristic (e.g., male) while
often ignoring other demographic characteristics (e.g., Asian; McGrath,
1998). Even when dispersion researchers take into account more than one
demographic characteristic by examining social category diversity, thus
combining the effects of age, gender, and race diversity, for instance, they
use an additive model and aggregate the effects of the single-characteristic
dispersion model (for an exception, see Alexander, Nuchols, Bloom,
& Lee, 1995). Although these aggregate dispersion models are able to tell
you the degree to which a group is demographically different on race and
gender and age, these models are not able to reflect adequately the degree
of interdependence between these characteristics. For example, we are
unable to tell if all the Asians in a group are also women. This limitation
is overcome in alignment-based theories.
Overview of Alignment Theories of Group Composition
In contrast to dispersion theories, alignment theories of group composition
take into account the simultaneous alignment of multiple demographic