infonet-economy

Many countries provide hiring subsidies aimed at promoting the employment of people with disabilities. The effectiveness of these subsidy schemes remains unclear. The subsidy lowers wages and may thus increase employment, but may also signal lower quality of the applicant (who has to disclose a disability), which deter employers from hiring. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of employer incentives provided by the Swiss Disability Insurance using a small scale social field experiment. Participants write application letters, where it is randomly decided whether the application discloses the subsidy to the potential employer or not. The effectiveness of the hiring subsidy is measured by call-back rates for interviews. The study is conducted in two waves. The first wave focuses on graduates from sheltered Vocational Education & Training Programs. The second wave is implemented in a sample of clients from employment consulting services. Our results reveal that the subsidy is ineffective or even counterproductive in a group of adolescents who are at the end of their vocational training program, but may increase call-back rates in a group of clients of job coaching services.

While prior research has related diversity climate to a range of desirable outcomes, much less is known about which factors shape employees' perceptions of organizational diversity-related policies, practices, and procedures. Our study aims at filling this gap in research by examining the interplay of leadership at different organizational levels for fostering diversity climate. Based on a social exchange perspective, we propose that high organizational-level leader-member exchange (LMX) quality—i.e. the degree to which leaders throughout an organization maintain high quality relationships with their followers—promotes employees' positive appraisal of organizational diversity climate. Moreover, we argue that this positive relationship is dependent on the degree to which organizations' top management leadership is perceived to be collective-focused and thereby to favor diversity. Our hypotheses are supported by structural equation modeling analyses in a multi-source dataset of 15,864 employees in 125 companies. Our findings have high practical relevance for organizations as we can show that diversity climate ultimately also enhances organizational performance and reduces employees’ turnover intentions.

This presentation summarizes the findings of an exploratory field study investigating the emergence of collective identity in diverse teams. Extant research
on the nexus of diversity and identity has almost exclusively focused on the effects of collective identity, i.e., its moderating role on the diversity-outcome relationship (e.g., van der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005). In contrast, the emergence of collective identity has hardly been investigated in the context of diverse teams. Our study aims at filling this gap in research by developing a process model of collective identity construction in diverse teams. To account for the process nature of our research interest, we adopt a qualitative theory-generating approach according to the principles of Grounded Theory (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Interview and survey data were collected from seven cross-organizationally staffed diverse work teams tasked with the coordination, planning, and implementation of collaborative efforts in the context of two United Nations peacebuilding operations. The emerging model describes collective identity construction as a process consisting of two phases of in- and outgroup comparisons. While the first phase is characterized by intra-group comparisons based on members' original subgroup identities (e.g., ethnicity, organizational background, age), in the second phase, comparisons are made vis{vis outside actors on the basis of the emerging collective team identity.

Within these two phases, our model distinguishes between two cognitive sensemaking steps: (1) sensemaking regarding members' individual roles in the team, and (2) collective sensemaking by the team as a whole. Furthermore, six contingency factors for the successful development of a collective identity in diverse teams are identified (leadership, interaction and communication, instrumentality, scope of autonomy, personnel continuity, and team outcomes). Given the importance of a strong collective identity for team performance (van Knippenberg & Ellemers, 2003), our findings are of high practical relevance. Both the exploration of the identity formation process and the identification of critical contingency factors allow for the derivation of valuable implications for the effective management of diverse teams (e.g., in the domains of team leadership or team member motivation).

Purpose: The goal of our study was to scrutinize the psychological processes that occur in individuals when developing identification with a highly diverse team.

Design/Methodology/Approach: A qualitative, theorygenerating approach following the principles of grounded theory was chosen as research design. Data were obtained from 63 personal interviews with members of seven UN peacebuilding teams in Liberia and Haiti. These teams were particularly well suited for analyzing the dynamics of identification processes as they constitute extreme cases with respect to team members' identity diversity.

Findings: Our analysis reveals four different processes that occur as individuals develop team identification (TI): enacting a salient identity, sensemaking about team experience, evaluating collective team outcomes, and converging identity.

Implications: We can show that team members engage in both individual- and collective-directed sensemaking processes during TI development, thereby using internal (i.e., other team members) and external points of reference (i.e., team-external actors) for ingroup/outgroup comparisons. Moreover, our study reveals different modes of identity convergence (i.e., active, reactive, and withdrawal) which are associated with different types of TI (i.e., deep-structured TI, situated TI, and disidentification).

Originality/Value: Although team members' identification with their workgroup has long been considered important for effective team functioning, knowledge about its development has remained limited and largely without empirical footing from a real-world team context. Our study represents the first empirical attempt to inductively identify the processes that occur in individuals as they
develop TI.