The Effect of Race-Ratio Composition on the Frequency of Organizational Communication

Kanter's (1977a) tokenism hypothesis predicts that as minority and majority social types within a group reach numerical parity, interactional isolation between the two groups will diminish. In an exploratory manner, it was hypothesized that increasing minority representation in a group would also affect the group's total frequency of interaction. This prediction was tested with a sample of 96 supervisory cadre varying in the relative proportions of black and white members. Interaction was operationalized in terms of interpersonal, organizational and interorganizational communication frequency. Multivariate analysis, which controlled for organizational size and complexity as well as background supervisory characteristics, indicated only partial support for the hypothesis. Increasing race-ratio composition was positively associated' only with organizational-level communication frequency. The implications of these results forfuture research strategems as well as for possible extension of Kanter's hypothesis to group-level analysis are presented.