Publications
Publications
- Academy of Management Journal
Relational Reconciliation: Socializing Others Across Demographic Differences
By: Lakshmi Ramarajan and Erin M. Reid
Abstract
In demographically diverse organizations, employees charged with socializing others—
socialization agents—must navigate a deep tension between the organization’s needs to
integrate individuals into a collective and individuals’ needs for recognition of their
unique identities. Through a qualitative study of employees in an urban charter high
school where race and class inequalities are salient, we find that socialization agents
experience this tension as identity threatening. We develop a theoretical model of relational reconciliation that traces how agents engage with this identity threat in an ongoing,
stumbling process. Through relational reconciliation, agents come to redefine their selves
in relation to their “socializees,” which enables them to engage in elaborated socialization practices that aim to meet the needs of both the organization and the socializee. Our
work repositions socialization agents as active parties in socialization, explores the
tensions of socializing members of marginalized groups into a dominant culture, and
reveals the importance of engaging with one’s own identities to reconcile these tensions.
Keywords
Citation
Ramarajan, Lakshmi, and Erin M. Reid. "Relational Reconciliation: Socializing Others Across Demographic Differences." Academy of Management Journal 63, no. 2 (April 2020): 356–385.