Advances in Group Processes: Volume 32

Cover of Advances in Group Processes
Subject:

Table of contents

(15 chapters)
Purpose

We propose an elaboration of the social structure and personality framework from sociological social psychology that is intended to promote integration across social psychological traditions and between social psychology and sociology, using the study of inequality as an example.

Methodology/approach

We develop a conceptualization of “generic” proximate processes that produce and reproduce inequality in face-to-face interaction: status, identity, and justice.

Findings

The elaborated framework suggests fundamental questions that analysts can pose about the macro-micro dynamics of inequality. These questions direct attention to the “how” and “why” of macro-micro relations by connecting structural and cultural systems, local contexts, and the lives of individual persons; highlighting implicit processes; making meaning central; and directing our attention to how people act efficaciously in the face of constraint.

Practical implications

Applying this framework, scholars can use existing theories and generate new ones, and can do so inductively or deductively.

Social implications

Research on inequality is enriched by social psychological analyses that draw on the full complement of relevant methods and theories.

Originality/value

We make visible the social psychological underpinnings of sociological research on inequality and provide a template for macro-micro analyses that emphasizes the centrality of social psychological processes.

Purpose

The ability to analyze social action as it unfolds on micro time scales – particularly the 24-hour day – is central to understanding group processes. This chapter describes a new approach to this undertaking, which treats individuals’ involvement in specific activities at specific times as bases for: (1) sequential linkages between activities; as well as (2) connections to others who engage in similar action sequences. This makes it possible to examine the emergence and internal functioning of groups using existing network analysis techniques.

Methodology/approach

We illustrate this approach with a specific application – a quantitative and visual comparison of the daily activity patterns of employed and unemployed people. We use data from 13,310 24-hour time diaries from the 2010–2013 American Time Use Surveys.

Findings

Employed and unemployed people engage in significantly different types of activities and at different times. Beyond this, network analyses reveal that unemployed individuals experience much lower levels of synchrony with each other than do employed individuals and have much less organized action sequences. In short, there is a chronic lack of prevailing norms regarding how unemployed people organize the 24-hour day.

Research implications

Future research that uses time-stamped data can employ network methods to analyze and visualize how group members sequence and synchronize social action. These methods make it possible to study how the structure of social action shapes group and individual-level outcomes.

Purpose

The present research builds on three complementary theories to explore how social influence processes in interaction bring about opinion and sentiment change: expectation states theory, affect control theory, and social influence network theory.

Methodology/approach

An experimental study is used to test intersections between the theories and assess how performance expectations, affective impressions of group members, and emergent perceptions of their influence work together to generate opinion and sentiment change.

Findings

Respondent opinions shifted in the direction of group leaders’ opinions, regardless of behavioral interchange patterns. Opinion change was greater when a third group member shared the leader’s opinion. Change in affective impressions was shaped by the group leader’s opinion, the assertiveness of their behavior, and the support of a third group member. The perceived influence composition of the group predicted opinion and sentiment change, above and beyond the effects of conditional manipulations. Features of the group interaction led to inferences about status characteristics that reinforced the influence order of the group.

Research implications

The chapter tests hypotheses from earlier work and explores status signals not yet tested as predictors of opinion change – behavioral interchange patterns and the degree of support for one’s ideas. In addition, it examines inferences about status characteristics following the group discussion, and influence effects on the prevailing definition of the situation.

Originality/value

This chapter contributes to recent integrative work that explores the relationship between performance expectations, affective impressions, and social influence. Synergistic processes forwarded by earlier research are tested, along with several newly proposed linkages.

Purpose

Are people more or less likely to use their power if they have high social status? This chapter discusses how having status affects the use of power by those in positions of power in exchange relations or small groups. Although status and power are typically assumed to be mutually reinforcing, there is growing recognition that having status may actually inhibit the use of power under certain conditions.

Methodology/approach

I review relevant research findings and consider three variables in particular that may moderate the effects of status on the use of power: legitimacy of status, achieved versus ascribed status, and individualist versus collectivist cultures.

Research implications

While status and power are close correlates, there is growing recognition – particularly in organizational psychology – that, under certain conditions, having status may inhibit the use of power or that lacking status increases power use. These studies shed new light on how status interacts with power in hierarchical groups and challenge the pervasive view of power and status as mutually reinforcing forces that perpetuate inequalities. Understanding more precisely when and why status and power have convergent or divergent effects on power use is an important task for scholars of group processes.

Originality/value

The possibility that status and power can have distinct consequences, let alone opposite effects, presents an intriguing opportunity for scholars of group processes to rethink and extend our understanding of social hierarchies in a new light.

Purpose

I present and evaluate various explanations for why new workers who were sponsored by oldtimers tend to have better job outcomes (better performance, more satisfaction, and less turnover) than do new workers who were not sponsored.

Methodology/approach

My evaluations involve searching for evidence that fits (or does not fit) each of the explanations.

Findings

The two most popular explanations argue that the job benefits of sponsorship arise because (a) sponsored newcomers have more realistic job expectations than do unsponsored newcomers, or (b) the quality of sponsored newcomers is greater than that of unsponsored newcomers. Unfortunately, these explanations have weak empirical support. A third explanation, largely untested as yet, attributes the performance benefits of sponsorship to social pressures that can arise when someone is sponsored for a job. These pressures include efforts by newcomers to repay the people who sponsored them, efforts by sponsors to assist the newcomers they sponsored after those persons have been hired, and stereotypes among coworkers about the kinds of people who get jobs through sponsors. Although limited as yet, the evidence regarding this new explanation seems promising.

Research implications

More research on this third explanation for sponsorship effects should be done. Suggestions for how to do such research are reviewed and a relevant experiment is presented.

Social implications

The ideas and evidence presented here could help employers who want to improve the job outcomes of their new workers. Poor outcomes among such persons are a major problem in many settings.

Originality/value

Although some of my ideas have been mentioned by others, they were not been described in much detail, nor were they tested. My hope is that this chapter will promote new theory and research on the performance benefits of sponsorship, a topic that has been largely ignored in recent years.

Purpose

To thrive, any individual, organization, or society needs to separate true from false expertise. This chapter provides a selective review of research examining self and social judgments of human capital – that is, expertise, knowledge, and skill. In particular, it focuses on the problem of the “flawed evaluator”: most people judging expertise often have flawed expertise themselves, and thus their assessments of self and others are imperfect in profound and systematic ways.

Methodology/approach

The review focuses mostly on empirical work specifically building on the “Dunning–Kruger effect” in self-perceptions of expertise (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). This selective review, thus, focuses on patterns of error in such judgments.

Findings

Because judges of expertise have flawed expertise themselves, they fail to recognize incompetence in themselves. Because of their flaws, most people also fail to recognize genius in other people and superior ideas.

Practical implications

The review suggests that organizations have trouble recognizing those exhibiting the highest levels of expertise in their midst. People in organizations also fail to identify the best advice and correct flawed ideas. Organizations may also rely on the “wisdom of crowds” strategy in situations in which that strategy actually misleads because too few people identify the best idea available.

Purpose

This chapter describes a theory of intergroup leadership. Research on reducing prejudice and intergroup conflict identifies a number of conditions, such as empathy, shared goals, crossed categorization, recategorization, and intergroup contact, which can be beneficial. It also identifies social identity threat as a stumbling block – processes intended to reduce conflict often threaten people’s sense of having a unique and distinctive social identity and thus provoke a defensive reaction that sustains conflict. But social psychology says little about the role of group leadership in conflict resolution.

Methodology/approach

I summarize what we know from social psychology about conditions that attenuate intergroup conflict; then focus on social identity and influence processes to present a new theory of leadership across conflicting groups.

Findings

Prejudice and intergroup conflict reduction rests on effective messaging and influence, which is often a matter of intergroup leadership where a leader must bridge and integrate warring factions within a superordinate entity. The challenge of intergroup leadership is to construct an intergroup relational identity that focuses on collaboration and avoids identity threat. I describe a model of intergroup leadership and discuss strategies, such as identity rhetoric, boundary spanning and leadership coalition-building, that such leadership should adopt to effectively reconstruct social identity to reduce conflict and prejudice between groups.

Originality/value

This is a development and extension of a more narrowly focused theory of intergroup leadership in organizational contexts. It will be of value to social psychology, the behavioral and social sciences, and those seeking to reduce prejudice and intergroup conflict through leadership.

Purpose

This chapter examines collaboration among highly autonomous, powerful, professional peers to explain why the benefits of teamwork that scholars typically find in traditional teams may not apply. The chapter analyzes the perspectives of individual professionals to show that, in this setting, collaboration is often seen as more costly than rewarding for the individuals involved. It presents a conceptual framework exploring this paradox and suggests directions for future research to elaborate an underlying theory.

Methodology/approach

The chapter draws on extensive qualitative data from surveys and interviews in three professional service firms, including a top 100 global law firm, a boutique executive search firm, and a large, US-based commercial advisory firm. Findings are married integrated with organizational theory to develop testable propositions for future research.

Findings

Because senior professionals collaborate with peers who have the autonomy to choose to work collectively or independently, power and authority are not means to create a team or make it effective. Findings show how professionals interpret the relative costs and benefits of collaboration, and suggest that in most cases, senior professionals will not attempt it or give it up before collaborations can reap important benefits. Thus, short-term costs prevent opportunities to experience longer term benefits for many professionals. Yet, some professionals have figured out how to use “instrumental collaboration” to shift the balance in their favor. The chapter’s conceptual framework uses a longitudinal perspective to resolve this seeming paradox.

Research implications

The chapter presents a nascent theory of instrumental collaboration, including five testable hypotheses, an emergent conceptual framework, and suggestions for specific future research directions.

Cover of Advances in Group Processes
DOI
10.1108/S0882-6145201532
Publication date
2015-07-08
Book series
Advances in Group Processes
Editors
Series copyright holder
Emerald Publishing Limited
ISBN
978-1-78560-077-7
eISBN
978-1-78560-076-0
Book series ISSN
0882-6145