Seminar – A relational demography model of respect

Professor Prithviraj Chattopadhyay, University of Auckland

People seek the respect of others who are significant in their lives. Respect matters in diverse teams because it indicates the extent to which the range of information brought together in such teams is attended to, processed, and integrated. However, little research has examined how demographic dissimilarity affects the respect accorded to dissimilar team members. Integrating the stereotype content model with relational demography and its underlying social identity theory, we investigate how being dissimilar affects individual behaviours undertaken to strive for respect and how these behaviours are evaluated by teammates. Based on multi-wave, multi-source data from a sample of 1,281 teachers from 181 kindergarten teacher teams, we found that lower levels of education dissimilarity for more-educated teachers contribute to higher levels of self-monitoring on competence and self-monitoring on warmth. In parallel, higher levels of education dissimilarity for less-educated teachers contribute weakly to lower levels of self-monitoring on competence and self-monitoring on warmth. Moreover, individuals’ respect-striving behaviours were subject to biased evaluation: self-monitoring on competence earned more respect for more-educated teachers; self-monitoring on warmth earned more respect for less-educated teachers. Our results support the notion that how dissimilar members earn respect in diverse teams depends on both how they behave and how these behaviours are evaluated by their teammates. We contribute to the literatures on respect and relational demography.

Speaker bio

Prithviraj Chattopadhyay is a professor of management at the University of Auckland. He holds a PhD in Management from the University of Texas at Austin. His research on relational demography and diversity, managerial cognition, and employment externalization has been published in journals such as Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Applied Psychology, Organization Science and Strategic Management Journal. He was an Associate Editor for the Academy of Management Journal (2016-2019) and is a currently a member of the editorial boards of Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Journal of Strategy and Management and Organizational Psychology Review.