GROUP DYNAMICS AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Organizational effectiveness may be either enhanced or inhibited through the actions of internal groups (Bettenhausen, 1991, p. 345). An understanding of group processes, thus, is essential for organizational managers. Increasing cultural pluralism emphasizes the need to both understand and manage group processes in contemporary organizations (Bernal, 1993, pp. 228-232). The delegation of autonomy to groups within nursing practice empowers nurses within groups to develop the strategies that effectively integrate pluralistic perspectives (Laschinger & Shamian, 1994, pp. 38-47). The integration of culturally differing perspectives within organizations is accomplished through the process of group dynamics (Smith & Comer, 1994, pp. 553-582). Group dynamics is a field of study that explains how individuals interact and build unity.
Groups are collections of individuals that are attracted to one another and who are held together by a variety of social forces (Bettenhausen, p. 347). Social identity theory posits that groups are formed on the bases of self-definition, attraction, and cultural participation (Bagby & Rector, 1992, pp. 397-406). This hypothesis leads to a conceptualization of groups as the "sum of the individual properties of their members" (Bettenhausen, 348). Bornewasser and Bober (1987, pp. 267-276) contended, however, that groups represent an amalgam of individual and structural attributes.
Social identity is defined as "the individual's knowledge" of personal membership in specific social groups, together with the "emotional value and significance" placed on such membership by the individual (Tajfel, 1972, p. 31). Social identity, thus, is closely related to self-concept.
Individuals apply the process of categorization to "partition the world into comprehensible units" (Abrams & Hogg, 1994, p. 2). This process is accorded a central role in social identity theory....