A Theoretical Exploration of Manager and Employee Social Identity, Cultural Values and Identity Conflict Management

As social identity conflicts based on ethnic origin, religion, caste, and so on, erupt around the globe, we investigate what may happen when these conflicts carry over into the workplace. In this article we explore possible employee responses to an organizational manager when the manager is attempting to prevent or reduce the intensity of social identity conflict in the workplace and the conflict is attributed to relatively non-fluid characteristics of social identity such as ethnicity, nationality, caste, or gender. We propose that employee responses to manager influence depend on: (1) whether the employee and manager are members of the same or different social identity groups, (2) whether the employees are members of the dominant or non-dominant group in the society at large, and (3) the shared influence of the embedded—autonomous cultural dimensions and the hierarchical—egalitarian cultural dimensions.