Diversity and Collective Action as an Organizational Process

Research into the effects of group diversity usually posits intra-group, interpersonal mechanisms to explain why more diverse work groups would have better or worse processes or performance than less diverse ones. Research into the causes of group diversity on the other hand usually downplays the importance of interpersonal judgment and bias and instead focus on the structural demography that filters the population that is considered at each stage of a process. In this paper I apply the process-based approach from stratification research to understanding the effects of group diversity on cases of collective action. Specifically, I examine several thousand attempts by work groups of varying racial and ethnic diversity to join labor unions between 1999 and 2009. I find that, consistent with the predictions of much group-process research, the new units that are formed are less diverse than the unions that first began organizing drives. Yet I also find that, consistent with the structural approach from stratification research, that filtering process can be explained by compositional differences among work groups across different industries, unions and states, as well as differential responses by employers to the groups’ efforts. While intragroup interactions doubtless matter for many group tasks, this study suggests caution in attributing too great a share of the variance in the outcomes of many processes to within-group mechanisms.