Lakshmi Ramarajan

Past, Present and Future Research on Multiple Identities: Toward an Intrapersonal Network Approach

Psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers have long recognized that people have multiple identities—based on attributes such as organizational membership, profession, gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and family role(s)— and that these multiple identities shape people’s actions in organizations. The current organizational literature on multiple identities, however, is sparse and scattered and has yet to fully capture this foundational idea. I review and organize the literature on multiple identities into five different theoretical perspectives: social psychological; microsociological; psychodynamic and developmental; critical; and intersectional. I then propose a way to take research on multiple identities forward using an intrapersonal identity network approach. Moving to an identity network approach offers two advantages: first, it enables scholars to consider more than two identities simultaneously, and second, it helps scholars examine relationships among ∗Email: lramarajan@hbs.edu The Academy of Management Annals, 2014 Vol. 8, No. 1, 589–659, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19416520.2014.912379 # 2014 Academy of Management 589 D ow nl oa de d by [ A ca de m y of M an ag em en t] a t 1 2: 30 2 8 M ay 2 01 4 identities in greater detail. This is important because preliminary evidence suggests that multiple identities shape important outcomes in organizations, such as individual stress and well-being, intergroup conflict, performance, and change. By providing a way to investigate patterns of relationships among multiple identities, the identity network approach can help scholars deepen their understanding of the consequences of multiple identities in organizations and spark novel research questions in the organizational literature.

The influence of organizational respect on emotional exhaustion in the human services

The influence of organizational respect on emotional exhaustion was examined in a longitudinal field study in the human services industry. Of a sample of 108 Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs) working in a long-term health care facility for the elderly, those CNAs who reported greater organizational respect at Time 1 experienced less emotional exhaustion 16 months later (Time 2). Through a longitudinal field experiment, we also examined the outcomes of an organizational change intended to increase organizational respect for the facilitys employees. As predicted, CNAs on units undergoing organizational change experienced a decrease in emotional exhaustion from Time 1 to Time 2 compared to CNAs on the control units, and this effect was partially mediated by the degree of organizational respect reported by the employees. CNAs satisfaction with the change was also related to a decrease in emotional exhaustion, and this effect was completely mediated by the degree of reported organizational respect.

A Positive Approach to Studying Diversity in Organizations

In this article, we distinguish between positive findings in diversity research and a positive approach to studying diversity. We first review and integrate research on diversity from organizational behavior, social psychology and sociology from 1998-2010 that has already documented positive findings in relation to diversity. We discuss this research using two broad categories: (1) What is positively affected by diversity? (Positive for what)? This category consists of research that has shown instances of intergroup equality, positive intergroup relations and the high performance of diverse groups. (2) When is diversity positive (Positive when)? This category describes organizational and individual level conditions under which intergroup outcomes, relations and group performance are positive. Second, we discuss a positive approach to studying diversity and describe some examples of organizational scholarship that has taken such an approach. We also discuss some of the limitations of taking a positive approach to diversity and propose some ways in which diversity scholars interested in taking a positive approach can overcome these limitations. By illuminating both positive findings in diversity research and a positive approach to studying diversity, we hope to spark more research that examines the beneficial and empowering aspects of difference for individuals and groups in organizations.

Blurring the Boundaries: The Interplay of Gender and Local Communities in the Commercialization of Social Ventures

This paper examines the critical role of gender in the commercialization of social ventures. We argue that cultural beliefs about what is perceived to be appropriate work for each gender influence how founders of social ventures incorporate commercial activity into their ventures. Specifically, we argue and show that although cultural beliefs that disassociate women from commercial activity may result in female social venture founders being less likely to use commercial activity than their male counterparts, these effects are moderated by cultural beliefs about gender and commercial activity within founders’ local communities. The presence of female business owners in the same community mitigates the role of founders’ gender on the use of commercial activity. We examine these issues through a novel sample of 584 social ventures in the United States. We constructively replicate and extend these findings with a supplemental analysis of a second sample, the full population of new nonprofit organizations foun...

Multiple Identity Configurations: The Benefits of Focused Enhancement for Prosocial Behavior

This paper introduces a configurational approach to the study of multiple identities. Specifically, it examines how prosocial identity combines with collective and individualistic identities in conflicting and enhancing ways to affect prosocial behavior in organizational settings. We examine an unexplored intuition in the multiple identities literature that when all identities are enhancing (a mutual enhancement configuration), it will be best for prosocial outcomes. Our results show, however—across two field studies and two experiments—that enhancement between prosocial and collective identities (a focused enhancement configuration) results in the highest levels of prosocial behavior. Furthermore, we trace this result to the greater self-serving orientation activated in a mutual enhancement configuration, where one’s individualistic identity enhances one’s other identities. Our work demonstrates the value of a configurational approach to the study of multiple identities, and it challenges the assumption ...

New Venture Milestones and the First Female Board Member

We explore the antecedents of the addition of the first woman to the boards of directors of entrepreneurial ventures. Building on research on resource dependency, we propose that new ventures are m...