This chapter reviews ingroup bias and its determinants; cognitive perspectives, biological perspectives, ingroup bias in the workplace. The theory of social identity bias is also introduced in order to show a reference onto why national ingroup bias may occur. And lastly, how multicultural organization can facilitate integration among workers from different backgrounds.
Social Identity Theory
Social identity theory proposes that the mere necessity for a self-esteem that is positive would prompt individuals to choose people from their ingroup than people from the outgroup (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). According to several perspectives that are related to self-concept, individuals tend to have a higher motivation to attain or maintain a level of self-esteem that is high (Wills, 1981). Other ideas on self-esteem are focused more on the personal level, whereas social identity theory focuses on the motivation to preserve a positive social identity. The theory suggests that when an individual is faced by a threat to their social identity, they preserve it positively by recognizing favorable contrasts between people from the outgroup and people from the ingroup. And this would lead to individuals discriminating against people from the outgroup in comparison to the ingroup.
These contrast and comparisons would have a result of a positive social identity, or a high self-esteem that is collective. Social identity theory suggests that there are two distinct aspects that are personal identity and social identity. Personal identity relates to the beliefs an individual has about their own abilities, attributes or skills like intelligence or charisma. And social identity is defined as "that aspect of the individual’s self-concept which derives from their knowledge of their membership in a social group together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership" (Tajfel, 1981, p. 255). Although personal identity is related to the characteristics of the individual, social identity is focused on the characteristics of the group of an individual; this could also characterize oneself as an individual (Crocker &
Luhtanen, 1990).
In organizations people generally do their work through groups. Organizations by definition are entities created from groups that interact with each other (Hodgkinson, 2003;
Hogg & Terry, 2000). And within these groups in the organization, individuals form or strongly realize multiple socially derived identities. Since we already know that social groups have
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different levels like sex, gender, religion and so on, it is important to have as subject to study behavior in the workplace as well as social behavior (Hogg & Terry, 2000).
Facilitation of Integration
For managers in the human resource department, one of the biggest challenges is being able to manage the increasingly diverse workforce (Mor-Barak, 2017). This becomes a problem because people’s incapacity to understand how the dynamics of a diverse workforce, to abstain from personal prejudice, and to not being able to free the potential this kind of environment could positively lead to (Adler, 1983). There are companies that bring training programs at different levels of the organization. Adler states that in order for a change in the organization or company, there is a need to examine and change policies. Additionally, know how these policies are carried away in the organization. And this would make certain that people from different cultures and nationalities are treated inclusively and fair. Mentorship programs could help with the organization in order to create an environment of not just being tolerant to one another, but also truthfully inclusive (Deardoff, 2009). Although Deardoff argues that there is a need to do more studies on diversity and inclusion in order to grasp the contextual small differences that could lead to positive organizational outcomes.
Although, diversity focuses on the demography of groups or individuals in an organization, meaning different cultures interacting in one place, inclusion or cultural integration deals with the encouragement of participation between these groups and individuals (Nair & Vohra, 2015). Based on previous research for the facilitation of cultural integration in a multicultural environment, the following elements were taken into consideration in order to define what are the competences workers should have (Blanco, Cruz & Romo, 2013; Deardoff, 2009)
1. Knowledge: Know other cultures, norms and expectations, knowledge of world events and world history, know the industry in other parts of the world, as well as marketing and international sourcing strategies.
2. Skills: Speak English or another language, be linguistically and culturally competent to live in another country, and participate and collaborate in projects with people from other cultures and nationalities.
3. Attitudes: Recognition of other cultures, appreciate them, be open to new experiences and reproduce cultural models.
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4. Experiences: having made short or long trips, being exposed to the experience from the cultural shock when leaving your country, having regular interaction with other cultures, have a university degree.
Another study states that a competent person for the global market is someone who has knowledge of current affairs, empathy with others, maintain a positive attitude, has a level of knowledge of foreign languages and accepts differences in values between people and cultures (Lambert, 1996). There is also an importance of having international education; managers, directors and heads of human resources should know about the global environment where they were developed, and know about the cultural diversity which they could face in their work.
(Alvarez et al., 2013).
Adaptation implies detachment from family and emotional ties and create new ones, deal with a new language, culture and customs of the destination. Adapt in the shortest possible time becomes a primary objective. On the other hand, the expatriate has the pressure for his performance in the functions for which they were assigned. Dealing with these pressures requires specially qualified personnel and with a series of characteristics that allow the company to meet its objectives (Polanco, 2013). According to Polanco, the great challenge of the human resources department begins from the moment of recruitment through the selection, employee socialization. The current context forces this department to know the appropriate policies to manage and watch carefully in each of the stages of the administration of the most valuable capital in the company, which is the people.
For this study, a theoretical framework was used in order to help guide the formulation and design of the interview questions for this study. And as the data is being collected through the interviews and document reviews, this also helped guide the data analysis. Now focusing on training and programs that organizations implement in order to promote inclusion, there are different strategies they may take. Many organizations are implementing affinity groups also known as employee resource groups (ERGs). ERG groups are groups that are led by the employees and are voluntary, and their main focus is to promote an environment in the workplace that is inclusive and diverse (Kaplin, Sabin & Swift, 2009).
The organization is the one sponsoring these groups but, as stated before, they are staffed by volunteers. These volunteers are workers of the organization who already have a paying job and assume responsibility to spend time in these groups (Rolf, Schalach & Welborne, 2015).
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The aim for people in ERGs is to assist in the recruitment and retention of other people that are like them, in this case other Latinos. They also focus on better the organization where they work (MacGillivray & Golden, 2007). The ERGs give support to the members of that group; for example, programs for mentorship. They also take responsibility of being a way to advocacy like promoting the learning about their purpose. giving space for sharing of information about each group (Kravitz, 2008; Monetta, Sink, & Van Aken, 1994).
A study discussed the possible future research related to ERGs and SIT, knowing that ERGs have a certain identity and possibly attract individuals sharing those identities. The study states that the stronger the member’s social identity is, the more effective are the group outcomes they belong to. And Lastly, since these groups take place inside the organization, individuals would identify both, with the ERG as well as the organization (Rolf, Schalach &
Welborne, 2015; 2017).
A research focusing on training programs for promoting the inclusion of employees in organizations, stated that socialization and readiness and motivation to learn are the best ways to achieve successful goals from a social identity theory perspective (Korte, 2007).
• Socialization: This type of training program focuses on the development of a group identity for the employee. Instead of newcomers to learn by themselves the culture, roles and tasks in the company, they should be assigned a mentor to guide them. The newcomer is able to give contributions to the group, so the group can learn knew knowledge from individuals.
• Readiness and Motivation to Learn: This is focuses on how ready the individual Is to learn and their capability to do so. How ready the individual is to possible changes.
Although even if the individual has these capabilities and readiness, if the group is not ready to change, it is hard for the individual to get to the expected change.
The growing globalization has led to a sudden increase of expatriates around the world.
Companies wanting to hire employees with different competencies and knowledge to increase competition. However, some organizations in Latin America do not implement any sort of programs to deal with the growing employee diversity. Organizations with diversity of employees, should have managers that could deal with difficulties like ingroup bias.
Organizations should have training programs for all employees to promote diversity, some of these trainings are the ERGs or programs that focus in the organizational culture. This study relied on SIT to understand the experiences of Latin American expatriates with ingroup bias.
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Additionally, have a further comprehension on which training and programs organizations implement and how effective they are.
Ingroup Bias
Ingroup bias is a phenomenon that has been continuously studied and reproduced in order to understand certain characteristics of social human behavior (Balliet, De Dreu & Wu, 2014; Dorrough, Fiedler, Glöckner & Hellman, 2018). Different studies have focused on ingroup bias in different contexts and human conduct; people tend to favor the groups in which they belong to as opposed to the groups they feel they do not belong to (outgroups) (Brown, Mullen & Smith, 1992). Individuals feel a higher level of motivation to finish a task during work when it is an ingroup task (De Gilder, Ellemers & Haslam, 2004). And the attributions of external factors for negative ingroup behavior but internal factors for positive ingroup behavior (Ben-Ami, Klar & Schori-Eyal, 2016; Guerin, 1999;). Another study stated that there are times that ingroup bias occurs, not because there is a strong cognitive rejection towards the outgroup, but there is a “love” feeling toward the ingroup, and that if there is a smaller distance socially, there would be even more feelings of cooperation with others (Ahmed, 2007).
Ingroup bias can take place in any type of group and also can be encountered in different ways, like perception of color of the skin (Amodio, Devine, Harmon-Jones, Plant & Vance, 2002; Han et al., 2015), political affiliation (Aglioti, Bufalari, Panasiti, Porciello & Schepisi, 2019), religion (Finkle, Johnson, LaBouff & Rowatt, 2012; Johnson, LaBouff & Rowatt, 2012), gender (Cook, Field, Martin, Nielson & Xiao, 2018) or socio-economic status (Bettencourt, Charlton, Dorr & Hume, 2001). Distinct researchers have suggested that the origins of ingroup bias is from the process of social categorization when individuals allocate others to be members of the group they feel part of or as members of other groups (Dovidio, Gurtman, Tyler & Perdue, 1990). Believing that people of the ingroup have more similarities to them. People with ingroup bias, tend to view the outgroups as less complex, less individuated than are ingroups (Huddy, Sears & Levy, 2013).
Determinants of Ingroup Bias
It is important to understand the different determinants of group identity and the drives that lead to biases (Christakis et al., 2012). Ingroup bias is an important aspect of human behavior. As we know people tend to help others that they believe are in their own group rather than those they believe are in the outgroup. The different determinants are discussed next.
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Cognitive perspectives. There have been arguments stating that biases or attitudes towards people different than oneself have to do a lot to the social processes a person had to go through at specific ages of their lives (Piaget & Weil, 1951; Kohlberg, 1969). Here are four ways argued to be an explanation to ingroup bias from a young age (McKown & Quintana, 2009, p. 55-61):
1) Age Changes: When being around four to five years of age, ingroup bias behavior is strong by looking at someone that is different. But at 7 years of age, this changes to a lesser extent of ingroup bias and allow the individual to think of others through different dimensions.
2) Parents and Peers: The parents and people around the individual can have a great impact on how ingroup bias is learnt. Not necessarily by telling them about it, but by actions they see.
3) Self-Group-Individual Focus: First, the individual focuses and analyzes the self-creating judgements. Then he/she looks at the groups from his/her own perspective, thus not completely accurate. The next stage means that the person is then capable of focusing on the individual by their unique differences rather than focusing solely on the group.
4) Affective-Perceptual-Cognitive Processes:
1. Affective is the fear of what is not known, emotional attachment.
2. Perceptual processes are those that can be observed and identify the differences between oneself and others.
3. Cognitive processes refer to how the individual has the ability to interpret the stimuli and the internal aspects of the people around them.
The central nervous system learns to react to external stimuli; light, heat, smell, and taste. This fills the individuals’ minds with information around them and the world that they live in. The neurons create an image from all the stimuli and thus gives meaning to it. Once the information is created, it conditions the way people see new stimuli or classify new experiences or people by the same concepts already established. This has a function of saving energy towards new learning but also leading to shortened perspectives to appreciate different perspectives and possibly lead to bias or prejudice (Christakis et al., 2012).
Biological perspectives. Differences that are related with ingroup bias within the individual could be related to the biology in each person (De Dreu et al., 2010). Many attitudes
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related to ingroup bias could be related or associated with heritage in the genes of a person.
Findings from different studies, suggest that ingroup bias can be a component that is already genetically regulated; although it could also be attributed to nongenetic environmental influences (Bates & Lewis, 2010). States that are psychologically related to threat like fear, anxiety, uncertainty and risk are also thought to be antecedents to ingroup bias. And one example according to some studies, is that there are experiences an individual can have that can increase the perception of outgroups as threats (Gaertner et al., 2006; Stephan & Stephan, 2000). Each individual’s own subjective social cues of anxiety or fear has been observed and shows a significant correlation between a person’s perceived threat toward the outgroups and ingroup bias. The genetic structure that regulate people’s way of processing threats could lead to biological inheritance of ingroup bias and the correlation that the perceived outgroup threat and ingroup bias have. According to previous research, there is also a transmission of ingroup bias culturally through environments that are shared and experiences the group can have that increase the feeling of threat towards an outgroup (Cheon, Livingston, Hong & Chiao 2014).
Living as a group serves the most important survival strategy that defines the human species. In the history of our evolution, humans discarded the majority of the physical aspects as well as instincts that involved survival as remote individuals. But there was a benefit to being a part of a group and cooperative interdependence could lead to, meaning that we have evolved to depend on others, and collaboration between one another instead of relying on physical strength (Brewer, 1999). A study interested in understanding whether or not there is a genetic evidence of ingroup bias, provided evidence that ethnic, religious and race bias occur (Bates & Lewis, 2000). The findings of this study showed that ingroup bias has a genetic impact, that biases can occur for different reasons rather than solely empiricist knowledge.
Globalization in Latin-American Globalization
The origin of globalization can be found in the process of internationalization of the economy, which has been taking place since the Second World War, meaning internationalization of the world economy a growth in trade and international investment faster than that of world production (Pincheira, 2017). Economic globalization is expressed as a continuous tendency to extend the markets, overcoming national barriers of origin to become
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a phenomenon world (Carter-Thullier & Moreno, 2017). Omoregie (2007) sees globalization as “An important dynamic process of interdependence among nations, which implies issues that are more global than nationals and who need attention” (p.3). Globalization is undoubtedly the central phenomenon, social, cultural, political and economic of our times, is to work in public sectors or private with a global technological interdependence and based on collaboration Multicultural and multilingual (Godbey & Turlington, 2002).
Other studies have shown the need for global competencies (Bremer, 2009).
Globalization has affected most of the modern workforce of the world, since the competences considered essential for productive professionals within a regional or national economy they are no longer enough in the market when the borders of the countries seem to be easier to cross.
A study reported that there are few managers, who have the skills necessary to manage companies globally (Black & Morrison, 1999). And that even though today's people are better informed and connected with other people around the world than at any other time in history, they are still not educated to work with people who are different from them (Bowen, Javidan
& Teagarden, 2011).
Latin-America
National identity is defined as a modern form of collective identity. Each national unit produced being hold together by its population, symbols, cult of heroes and national holidays (Habermas, 1994). In Latin America, the newly constituted republics advanced during the second half of the nineteenth century the task of self-identification to guarantee its own identity differentiation from other nations. The efforts modernizers carried out in some countries in the first decades of present century, by way of certain industrial development and the consolidation of a centralized state, promoted the construction national identity (Blanco, Cruz & Romo, 2013). As the results showed, the American and Mexican directors have low levels of global competition to support companies globally.
Directors must have more knowledge of the world around them, especially because now there is a need to work not only at the local level but compete globally. This is an important reason why universities must prepare students to become interculturally competent in a global market. The world economy is moving towards removing barriers but cultural barriers still persist, so these barriers must be removed. The importance of speaking other languages, get to know other cultures and the understanding of cultural differences in other parts of the world,
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are aspects that are recognized by large international companies, as well as successful small businesses (Blanco, Cruz & Romo, 2013).
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