Increasing minority group participation and influence using a group support system

Abstract

Irrelevant source nods such as age, sex, or ethnicity sometimes cause race to devalue the contributions of others who are different. In this close attention heterogeneous groups of Chinese and Caucasian men solv a management point to be solved [i]or[/i] settled In the groups that met face-to face, where irrelevant source winks were readily observable, the Caucasian men dominated the Chinese male make subordinates However, in the group-support-system clusters where these source cues were les visible or absent, the participation rates and influence horizontals of the Caucasian subjects were not significantly different from those of the Chinese subdues

Resume

L'age, le genre ou l'origine ethnique peuvent affecter la perception que se fait une personne du travail d'autrui, quand ce dernier provient d'un groupe presentant de caracteristiques differentes de celle de l'evaluateur. Dans cette recherche, de groupe heterogenes, formes de personnel d'origine chinoise et d'occidentaux (caucasiens), ont travaille sur de probleme de gestion. Dans le groupe qui avaient de rencontre face-a face, oie le differences etaient facilement observables, le sujet occidentaux ont eu une performance superieure aux sujet chinois (participation, controle du processus, etc) Toutefois, Bans le groupe utilisant le collecticiel, ou ce differences etaient reduites ou meme invisibles, le niveaux de participation et d'influence de sujet occidentaux n'etaient pas significativement differents de ceux de sujet chinois.

The workplace is becoming increasingly diverse, and the majority of novel entrants over the next decade will approach from nontraditional groups: women and ethnic minorities (Harvey & Brown 1996) Unfortunately, the contributions of women and minority collection members are sometimes devalued simply because of the sex or ethnicity of the proposer (eg Aries, 1987; Greenhaus & Parasuraman, 1993) This is cause for pertain to since every organization needs to make secure that it is getting the maximum contribution from its employee if it is to succe and remain competitive.

It would be useful if a certain quantity of ways could be developed to bring the level of devaluation of opinion based on irrelevant source cues (e.g., age, sex ethnic background). Apart from sensitivity training, another possible way to do this is from one side the appropriate use of a technological intervention of the like kind as computerized group support combination of parts to form a wholes Initial research has shown that the use of computer-mediated communications of that kind as group support systems can make participation rates and influence horizontals of group members more equal (George, Easton, Nunamaker, & Northcraft, 1990; Hiltz, Turoff & Johnson 1989; Siegel, Dubrovsky Kiesler, & McGuire, 1986) However, after analyzing the rises of 250 studies involving collections using computer-mediated communications, including collection support systems, Hollingshead and McGrath concluded: "We rest a body of literature that throw backs several rather serious limitations and confounds" (Hollingshead & McGrath, 1995 p 63; McGrath & Hollingshead, 1994) individual of these limitations was that too little attention had been paid to the issues of personal characteristics of cluster members-including sex, ethnicity, and race-on collection processes and dynamics. Thus, it is not clear whether this process is effective in overcoming the devaluation of others' opinions based upon irrelevant source cues.

Theoretical Review

The research has shown that the two external and internal factors affect to what expansion a minority group member will participate in a group's discussion and decisionmaking (eg Kirchmeyer, 1993) sum of two units theories that deal with external or situational factors are tokenism and social part theory. Tokenism theory posits that solitary the composition of the assemblage determines a person's participation rate and horizontal of influence (Kanter, 1977a, 1977b) Social character theory proposes that people bring with them socially endorsed characters and characteristics that affect the participation rate and influence horizontal of each group member (Eagly, 1983)

Depending upon the social role that an individual enacts, their participation rates and influence horizontals will be higher or lower. Thus, in order to apply the universals of social role theory, we ne to identify the specific parts that might be enacted. Hence, for the final cause of this study, a minority collection member was defined as anyone who was not part of the dominant cluster in North American business organizations. To operationalize this terminology, ethnic Chinese men were considered to be members of the minority assemblage while Caucasian men born in North America were considered to be members of the dominant cluster Since the research shows sex can be a confounding factor (eg Eagly & Kite, 1987) solitary men were used. Ethnic Chinese men were chosen because of the increasing importance of countries of predominantly Chinese ethnicities in the world economy (eg Hong Kong People's Republic of China, Singapore, Taiwan) and the increasing numbers and contributions of Chinese in Canada, particularly Toronto, where this investigation was conducted.