Multicultural Employees: A Framework for Understanding How They Contribute to Organizations

TLDR

Organizations are seeing a growing number of employees who identify with multiple cultures and internalize their associated cultural schemas. The article develops a map of multicultural identity configurations and provides a theoretical basis for understanding how such employees contribute to organizations. The framework applies social‑identity theory to show how identity integration and plurality influence personal, social, and task outcomes, with organizational identification and culture moderating these effects.

Abstract

Organizations are experiencing a rise in a new demographic of employees—multicultural individuals, who identify with two or more cultures and have internalized associated cultural schemas. I create a map of possible ways to organize more than one cultural identity, based on identity integration, which ranges from separated to integrated, and identity plurality, which ranges from single to multiple. Cognitive and motivational mechanisms drawn from social identity theory explain how identity patterns then influence both benefits and challenges for multicultural employees, categorized into personal, social, and task outcomes. Organizational identification and organizational culture moderate relationships between multicultural identity patterns and outcomes. The framework presented in this article offers a theoretical basis for understanding how multicultural employees may contribute to their organizations.