Social Category Diversity Promotes Premeeting Elaboration: The Role of Relationship Focus

Denise Lewin Loyd (), Cynthia S. Wang (), Katherine W. Phillips () and Robert B. Lount ()
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Denise Lewin Loyd: MIT Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Cynthia S. Wang: Spears School of Business, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma 74078
Katherine W. Phillips: Columbia Business School, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027
Robert B. Lount: Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210

Organization Science, 2013, vol. 24, issue 3, 757-772

Abstract: A purported downside of social category diversity is decreased relationship focus (i.e., one’s focus on establishing a positive social bond with a coworker). However, we argue that this lack of relationship focus serves as a central mechanism that improves information processing even prior to interaction and, ultimately, decision-making performance in diverse settings. We introduce the construct of premeeting elaboration (i.e., the extent to which individuals consider their own and others’ perspectives in the anticipation of an interaction) and explore its link with social category diversity and relationship focus. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that when disagreement occurs, social category diversity increases premeeting elaboration, with relationship focus as a central causal mechanism. Experiment 3 shows that premeeting elaboration has important implications for performance: disagreeing dyads with social category diversity elaborate more prior to meeting and, as a result, perform better on a decision-making task than those with social category homogeneity. We discuss the value of studying early-stage interaction and propose a reconsideration of the “downside” of social category diversity.

Keywords: social category diversity; premeeting elaboration; relationship focus; decision-making performance; disagreement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

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