Cliff Cheng

Are Asian American Employees a Model Minority or Just a Minority

This literature review note attempts to review and import from Asian American studies into organizational behavior key aspects of the Model Minority Thesis literature as it relates to workforce diversity. The supportive and critical perspectives on the Model Minority Thesis are explored. On the supportive side, it is argued that Asian Americans are a Model Minority: too successful to be considered a disadvantaged minority. Supporters want other minority groups to emulate Asian Americans and to eliminate affirmative action. Critics disaggregate the statistics used by proponents and find a bimodal distribution; some Asian Americans are economically well off but run into a glass ceiling, whereas others are disadvantaged.

Uniform change: an ethnography on organizational symbolism, volunteer motivation and dysfunctional change in a paramilitary organization

The United States Air Force’s (USAF) unpaid civilian auxiliary, the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) wears USAF uniforms and performs search and rescue missions looking for downed aircraft. After CAP members miswore the USAF uniform (Cheng, 1996), the USAF instituted a top‐down uniform change making the CAP uniform more distinct from the USAF uniform. CAP members, who affirmed that they were to be motivated solely by a desire to perform CAP’s mission, and not motivated by wearing USAF uniforms, quit and withdrew commitment. This participant observation ethnography studies how USAF’s misunderstanding of volunteer motivation and the symbolism of organizational uniforms led to dysfunctional organizational change. An alternative solution that makes positive symbolic change is proposed.

On the Functionality of Marginalized Masculinities and Femininities: An Ethnography on Organizational Power and Gender Performances

This ethnography tells of the social construction of masculinities and femininities in The Group, a charismatic social change movement. While sex essentialism led to sex-segregated jobs and only two authorized gender performances, men performing hegemonic masculinity and women performing emphasized femininities, alternatives existed. Alternative gender performances—for example, men performing emphasized femininity, men performing marginalized masculinity, and women performing hegemonic masculinity—were functional to organization. While these alternative gender performances were allowed, they were not acknowledged in the sex essentialist organizational discourse.

Multi‐level gender conflict analysis and organizational change

Examines a seemingly simple case of gender conflict by analysing the multi‐levelled, intra‐personal, interpersonal‐intergroup, and mass unconsciousness of gender conflict. Both process analysis and psychodynamic analysis are used to show that gender does not stand apart from other demographic diversity factors.

A comparison of the modernistic Toyota model of greenfield start‐ups with a pre‐modern Chinese family business transplanted to the USA

The Chinese family business (CFB) is one of the most enduring and prolific organizational forms in human history. The CFB is an alternative to a modernistic organization and has been understudied in the post‐modern organizational theory literature. Compares a pre‐modern CFB transplanted to the USA with the modernistic Toyota model of greenfield start‐ups.