MORSe (Management and Organization Research Seminars): "Ostracism in Small Groups: A Theory of Hostile Ties"
Istituto di management e organizzazione
Data d'inizio: 18.06.2009
Data di fine: 19.06.2009
12.30-14.00
Room 251
Davide Barrera (Utrecht University)
Abstract
Ostracism in small groups, characterized by apparently coordinated hostile attitudes and actions of multiple members of the group directed against one individual group member (or against a small minority), is a widespread phenomenon occurring in various types of groups (e.g., organization units, school classes, prisons, religious groups, hunting-gathering tribes). Nevertheless, the existing relevant literature has focused mainly on psychological antecedents, causes, and consequences of ostracism while a sociological analysis of the determinants of ostracism is still missing. In this paper, I propose to adopt a social network approach to analyze the individual ostracizing decisions: each ostracizing decision can be represented by the creation of a negative tie and the social conditions in which negative ties emerge can be captured by the personal networks of positive relationships in which both the ostracizer and the victim are embedded. Furthermore, I develop an integrated framework combining theoretical arguments from two different research traditions: sociological literature on emergence and enforcement of social norms and social psychological literature on the “black sheep” effect. After briefly reviewing these two research traditions, I present a set of testable propositions in which an individual ostracizing decision is assumed to depend on dyadic characteristics as well as on the number of positive ties of both ostracizer and victim.
Keywords: group processes, social networks, negative ties, social norms, group identity.
