Gender and Ethnic Homophily in Organizational Culture Perception: A Social Network View

Abstract

Studies of organizational culture perception from a social network view have found that structural antecedents such as individuals’ unique network position and embeddedness in strong cliques (Simmelian ties) influence the degree to which individuals share similar perceptions of the organizational social network. However, studies have not considered other factors which might contribute to perceptual similarity, specifically the role of homophily, or similarity based on gender and ethnic sub-group membership. In this study, we test the link between gender/ethnic homophily and network perceptions using cognitive social structure data collected from the technical call center of a US manufacturing firm. Our results indicate that both gender and ethnic homophily influence shared perceptions of the organization beyond structural antecedents. Post-hoc analysis shows that both majority and minority ethnic subgroups exhibited similarities of network perception, showing that homophily effects were not limited to the dominant ethnic group. Such effects were found across both positive and negative tie networks as well. Implications and limitations are also discussed.