Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

10-2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Business

Advisor

Stephan Dilchert

Subject Categories

Organizational Behavior and Theory

Keywords

Bicultural, Social identity, Workplace deviance

Abstract

Research on biculturals has informed us much regarding their cognition and identity integration, however little as to the bicultural perception of in- and out-groups, and whether it can be primed. I examined this question in a workplace setting using the black sheep framework, specifically: Given the activation of one of a bicultural's specific cultural identities, will he or she allocate punishment to deviant employees of different cultural backgrounds differently based on whether he or she views them as an in-group or out-group member? In Study 1, I show that Asian-American biculturals do assess deviant employees of different cultural backgrounds differently depending on the cultural prime, and that this effect is moderated by their level of bicultural identity integration. In Study 2, I show that Hispanic-American biculturals exhibit a contrastive response to cultural primes, which still supports the main hypotheses (Study 2). The reason for this difference between the two study samples, implications for bicultural research, and organizational behavior research are discussed.

Share

COinS