The following post is a review/critique of :
Insider or outsider? How employee perceptions of insider status affect their work behavior
Christina L Stamper; Suzanne S Masterson
Journal of Organizational Behavior; Dec 2002
Stamper & Masterson (2002) introduce a new construct called Perceived Insider Status (PIS) which refers to one’s perception of inclusion in a particular organization. The authors identify a possible gap in the literature and some of the constructs already used in the organizational environment to suggest that people have different “feelings” of whether they belong to the organization they work in or not. The research questions that follow have to do with whether there is a difference between actual inclusion in an organization and the perception of inclusion, how those perceptions might differ from other previously suggested constructs and the possible implications to the organizational environment.
To clarify the theoretical construct, the paper begins with a discussion of the relationship, similarities and differences between PIS and some possibly related theories. Firstly, there is an initial inconsistency in the definition of the construct that I find a bit confusing. In one of the definition PIS is about the perception (p. 876), while in the other it is about the emotions (p. 878). Without being too familiar with the all related psychological theories, I also believe the perception of insider status is naturally associated with how a person defines an ingroup and outgroup. Moreover, I believe a person’s perception of inclusion is well-connected to his perception of others’ perception of the persons status. Who or what is the organization in this case might be important. For example, it is almost assumed that a full time employees in an organization are the ingroup and that part time employees are the outgroup, but it might also make sense to look at it as two ingroups that perceive each other as outgroups. Whether one defines the organization as his ingroup or not might depend on a number of things, but a person working in an organization – especially larger ones that include units, departments, work teams etc. – may define his ingroup in so many different ways. Why is this important? Firstly, because it might mean that perceptions of being an insider are tricky, multifaceted and on multiple levels, and secondly it also suggests different antecedents and consequences based on the group and level you’re referring to, especially when we look at organizational outcome. To move into more concrete examples, part time employees might already expect different contract terms, exchange and treatment than full time employees and so their perception of inclusion would be affected more by dynamic factors of their relationship with the other employees or their manager, not to mention that it might depend – especially in samples like restaurants- on the number of full-time and part-time employees in the firm. A person might feel very much part of a sub-group in the organization while feeling somewhat disassociated or mistreated by the organization. Such a person might still be very altruistic towards his ingroups. Examining the 5 items scale for Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) altruism it seems that the level of analysis might is not very clear, and so the exact meaning of PIS and the possible relationship with OCB should perhaps be elaborated. It should also be noted that the well known ingroup outgroup bias suggests that the definition of your ingroup is sensitive (last digit in ID, same birthday) and so are the ones defined as outgroup. How one might perceive people in the organization to be ingroup and outgroup and his own inclusion within could be very different between people and based, even subconsciously, on different triggers and definitions.
There are a number of basic assumptions that run throughout the paper that require elaborations. Although unstated, it seems there’s almost an assumption that people want to be part of the organizational ingroup as that would positively impact their behavior in the organization, but do they really? Some people might be more professionally oriented (psychologists in a hospital), perhaps they’re of different cultures and values. An assumption perhaps more clear in the paper is that people expect to be in the organizational ingroup and when they aren’t this might reflect negatively on their emotional state and their contribution to the organization. But do temps and part-time employees expect reciprocity, organizational support and perceptions of inclusions as full timers? They might, yet they might not, and so an understanding of expectations and how those interact with perceptions to influence work behavior nonetheless seem important.
The issues above perhaps further reflect on the main concern at the core of the study that has to do with construct validity and validation. The author does an almost minimal job with the construction of the construct measurement through personal deduction from a very early-stage theory. The initial 10-items were developed by a single author with no explanation of how they were derived and no attempt was made to show that the items produced are indeed related in any way to the construct. Brainstorming with other researchers, consulting with practitioner experts in the field, conducting interviews, or doing an initial inductive collection of items could have helped be more confident that the construct is clear, the conceptualization makes sense and that the measurement covers the entire domain. I’m no measurements expert, but it seems at times as though a few stages in questionnaire development were combined – content validity assessment, item reduction and convergent/discriminant validity all combined together into one.
I find that the confusing results regarding H1 and H5, rather contrary to the theory, imply that there is much work to be done in both theory and empirics to untangle the PIS web from other constructs and understand more about what this construct means and how it affects behavior. The article conclusion that PIS has been shown distinct from POS is questionable and somewhat dubious when one considers how the PIS measurement has been constructed and validated against the POS scale. With this process, they’re bound to come out as different. As for the claim of causality from POS to PIS, once we’ll make it more clear what or who the “organization” is, a story could perhaps be told of an “organization” reacting to how “it” perceives the employees contribution, which results show is related to the employees perception of belonging.
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