조직 내 비주류집단의 심리적 소유감과 직무성과: 관계적 인구통계와 권력지각의 통합모형

Managing diversity is one of the major topics in organization studies today. As the Koreanworkforce becomes more diverse, effective management of ‘minority groups’ has become a crucialand challenging issue in diversity management and practice. Previous research has only focusedon numerical minority groups or the functional aspects of minority groups (e.g., education, career,dominant function diversity, etc.). However, numerical minority groups may hold high power andinfluence in the workplace. For example, dominant coalitions in Korean firms usually consist ofstar-performers from prestigious universities or invited Caucasian top executives. Despite being smallin number statistically because of their educational performance or their race, respectively, theyplay virtually all the major roles in Korean organizations. Conversely, many lower-level employeesand immigrant workers from developing countries are de facto minorities regardless of their abundantnumber. They have an inferior power position in firms. In this study, we consider both numerical majority-minority and superiority-inferiority in powerrelations at the same time. Drawing on relational demography theory and on perceived powerperspective, we examine the main effects and the interaction effects of a team member’s demographicdissimilarity and perceived power (evaluated by others in the same team) on his or her job attitudeand work performance (as evaluated by their immediate supervisor). Relational demographicdissimilarities include gender, hometown, organizational tenure, and career. Job attitude markersinclude organizational commitment and job satisfaction, and work performance measures includetask performance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). Furthermore, we investigate themediating role of psychological ownership in relationships according to relational dissimilarity,perceived power, and outcome variables.Specifically, this study proposes the following hypotheses:H1 : Relational demographic dissimilarities are negatively related to individual job attitudeand work performance. H2 : Perceived power is positively related to individual job attitude and work performance. H3 : Perceived power moderates the negative relationship between demographic dissimilaritiesand individual job attitude/work performance. The relationship between demographicdissimilarities and individual job attitude/work performance will be mitigated when perceivedpower is high. H4 : Psychological ownership mediates the relationship between demographic dissimilaritiesand individual job attitude and work performance. H5 : Psychological ownership mediates the relationships between perceived power and individualjob attitude and work performance. H6 : The interaction effect of demographic dissimilarities and perceived power on individualjob attitude/work performance will be mediated by psychological ownership. To test these hypotheses, we collected individual-level dissimilarity and power perception datafrom 120 employees in one medium-sized manufacturing company in Korea. We measured fourdemographic dissimilarities: gender and hometown (for ascribed characteristics), organizationaltenure and career (for functional characteristics). We also constructed a ‘power perception matrix’from the cross evaluation of power by whole team members. Following previous studies, taskperformance (in-role performance) and contextual performance (i.e., OCB or extra-role performance)were measured for work performance, and job satisfaction and organizational commitment wereevaluated as markers of job attitude. We analyzed independent and interaction effects of relationaldemography and power with mediation effects of psychological ownership through hierarchicalregression analysis. Major findings are as follows: (1) Among demographic dissimilarity, hometown dissimilarityshowed significant negative effects on job attitudes and OCB. (2) All of the demographic dissimilarityvariables (except for career dissimilarity) were negatively associated with OCB. (3) Perceivedpower had a positive effect on job attitude, but not on task/contextual performance. (4) The interactionof hometown dissimilarity and perceived power revealed significant interaction effect on job attitudes. The negative relationship between hometown dissimilarity and job attitude was mitigated whenthat member’s perceived power was high. However, there were no interaction effects with othercombinations of relational demography and perceived power. (5) We found a mediating effectof psychological ownership in three independent variables: career dissimilarity, perceived power,and the interaction term of hometown dissimilarity and power. This study found both direct and interaction effects of relational demographic variables andperceived power as well as a mediating role of psychological ownership. Based on these findings,we discuss theoretical and practical implications for diversity management and some directionsfor future research. This study is not without limitations. Our data comes from a single company, which may constrainthe application of our findings. In addition, the effects of the other meaningful relational demographic characteristics in Korea, such as social prestige of academic institutions or employment status(regular or temporal employee), also should be examined in future studies. Finally, beyond individualleveldissimilarity and power, group and organizational norms or climate (e.g., anti-bias norm) mayexert significant influence on the effects of main variables in this study. Hence, a multi-level studywhich employs upper-level characteristics as well as individual-level power and dissimilarity canbe a promising research for future diversity studies.