The Grassroots Coping Strategy of Split Ascription

Abstract

This chapter discusses the main coping strategy employed by members of minority groups for dealing with the tensions that the broader Palestinian–Israeli conflict introduces into the workplace. This strategy can be termed “split ascription,” which refers to the conceptual separation that members of minority groups create between their direct work environment, composed of personal social ties with team members, and the structural elements of the employing organization, including hiring and promotion procedures and decisions. Members of both minority and majority groups depict their direct work environment as politically neutral and generally describe personal work ties between Jewish and Palestinian-Arab workers as positive, collegial, or neutral. By contrast, minority group members often regard structural elements of the employing organization as prejudiced and even racist. The recourse of minority group members to split ascription demonstrates the importance of examining the intersubjective views of workers in diverse work teams, along with their perceptions of structural and interactional elements, in order to fully comprehend interethnic workplace relations in war-torn regions. Understanding the grassroots strategy of split ascription in terms of a unified coping strategy also points to a possible critique of existing theoretical approaches to the study of interethnic workplace relations.