To Disclose or Not to Disclose: The Ironic Effects of the Disclosure of Personal Information About Ethnically Distinct Newcomers to a Team

Bret Crane (), Melissa Thomas-Hunt () and Selin Kesebir ()
Additional contact information
Bret Crane: Utah State University
Melissa Thomas-Hunt: Vanderbilt University
Selin Kesebir: London Business School

Journal of Business Ethics, 2019, vol. 158, issue 4, No 2, 909-921

Abstract: Abstract Recently, scholars have argued that disclosure of personal information is an effective mechanism for building high-quality relationships. However, personal information can focus attention on differences in demographically diverse teams. In an experiment using 37 undergraduate teams, we examine how sharing personal information by ethnically similar and ethnically distinct newcomers to a team affects team perceptions, performance, and behavior. Our findings indicate that the disclosure of personal information by ethnically distinct newcomers improves team performance. However, the positive impact on team performance comes at a cost to the newcomers, who are perceived as less competent by others and experience heightened social discomfort in team interactions. Ironically, what benefits the ethnically diverse team may undermine its ethnically distinct members. This study highlights how the management of diversity may sometimes require making trade-offs between individual interests and those of the team.

Keywords: Teams; Diversity; Newcomer; Ethnicity; Intervention; Social dilemma; Public good (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-017-3714-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:158:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s10551-017-3714-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-017-3714-0

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().