Premium
An expanded theory of pluralistic interactions in voluntary nonprofit organizations
Author(s) -
Weisinger Judith Y.,
Salipante Paul F.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
nonprofit management and leadership
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.844
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1542-7854
pISSN - 1048-6682
DOI - 10.1002/nml.179
Subject(s) - diversity (politics) , pluralism (philosophy) , sociology , organization studies , grounded theory , identity (music) , public relations , field (mathematics) , organizational theory , management theory , epistemology , order (exchange) , political science , management , social science , business , qualitative research , economics , mathematics , philosophy , physics , anthropology , acoustics , pure mathematics , finance
Demographic trends suggest a more culturally diverse society, yet research focusing specifically on the management of this diversity in nonprofit organizations is at a nascent stage. Furthermore, traditional ways of conceptualizing cultural diversity in U.S. society are becoming outmoded. Thus, nonprofit managers and leaders can benefit from new ways of thinking about and managing diversity. In this article, we extend our proposed representationinteraction model of diversity in voluntaristic nonprofits (Weisinger and Salipante, 2005) by more closely examining the interaction prong of our model in order to provide a more grounded understanding of this new approach to increasing pluralism. The expanded model that we discuss here is founded on interaction processes: in‐group identity and recategorization. This study enables us to transform our grounded theory into a theory of practices that leaders of voluntaristic organizations can directly apply. We present findings from a field study of a national nonprofit organization and discuss implications for practice and research.