Proactivity punished: Nativist bias in advice seeking

Abstract

This study theorizes a nativist bias in interpersonal advice seeking within organizations and empirically assesses its effects. Extending the existing discrimination and social networks research, I argue that the effects of nativism—a bias against foreigners—in advice seeking and other network relations cannot be validly inferred from native/nonnative outcome inequalities. Instead, the effects of nativism in social networks are revealed in natives’ asymmetric behaviors and attitudes that disadvantage nonnatives. It is hypothesized that, other things being equal, natives seek task-related advice across the nativity divide less frequently than nonnatives do. In another manifestation of nativism, native advice seeking targets perceive nonnatives who seek their advice as less competent than those nonnatives who do not seek their advice. Consistent evidence of these patterns was found in four separate networks of working professionals. These findings have implications for the study of discriminatory biases in social networks and for countering such biases in organizational and educational settings.