Network Utilization Across Racial Groups: Understanding Minority Group Members’ Network Patterns and Behavior

Abstract: Ample scholarship suggests that minority group members may be at a disadvantage when it comes to building and utilizing social networks professionally (e.g., Ibarra, 1993; Khattab et al., 2020). However, when minority group members find themselves in a position to utilize their network contacts, they tend to reap long-lasting beneficial effects at work (Merluzzi & Sterling, 2017). My work focuses on this important tension. In order to bridge this gap and design and test interventions that help minority group members build productive networks whose utilization will lead to beneficial outcomes, I argue that we first need to understand minority group members’ perceptions and attitudes towards utilizing their networks in the first place. Would minority group members who are in a position to reap benefits from their network be willing to utilize their contacts instrumentally?

Keywords: networks, diversity, group membership

Topic: DEI   |   Format: Extended Abstract