America’s divisions causing workplace dysfunction

Organizational engagement with social issues is pushing culture wars into corporate America, leading to bickering and suboptimal performance, says Luke N. Hedden, assistant professor at the University of Miami Patti and Allan Herbert Business School.

He’s co-authored a paper on the phenomenon, “‘MOB’ mentality? On the formation and consequences of moralized opinion-based intergroup conflict in organizations.” The study was published by the Academy of Management Review.

“We see organizations and the goals they’re trying to accomplish coming to a halt while they work through some intense interpersonal, but largely intergroup, conflicts,” said Hedden, who’s with Miami Herbert’s Department of Management.

“If we look back over the last 10 years or so, this is something that we see more and more examples of, whereas 20 years ago there were certain things you didn’t talk about at work.”

Hedden and co-authors Michael Pratt, a management professor at Boston College, and Hamza Khan, a postdoctoral scholar with the University of Illinois Chicago’s business college, wrote that Moralized Opinion-Based (MOB) Intergroup Conflict often stems from closely held opinions on social issues. Hedden said that racial and gender inequality, climate change, and LGBTQ rights are examples of issues that can foment workplace discord.

The Academy of Management Review piece offers illustrative examples of several corporations that have been impacted by MOB Intergroup Conflict, including Wayfair, Disney and Coinbase.

“Groups inside organizations have actually staged walkouts,” Hedden said. “Sometimes, employees are quitting altogether, or writing public letters. All of those things can hamper group and organizational productivity.

“In the paper, we talk about how there are some general societal trends kind of pushing this,” Hedden continued.

“One being that workers in organizations are now expecting, and sometimes even putting pressure on, their leadership to take stances on issues. Once that public pronouncement comes out, then you have a lot more potential for these fires to start.”

Hedden’s paper takes pains to note how the emotion of disgust typically underlies opinion moralization, which makes MOB intergroup conflict uniquely dehumanizing, contagious, and difficult to resolve.

Hedden’s paper broadly points out organizations, managers, and organizational scholars to look at two big ideas to help mitigate the impact of MOB intergroup conflict.

“One is what we call lowering the temperature, trying to reduce the emotional intensity of these types of conflicts,” Hedden said. “The second is reducing certainty by creating generative doubt—basically pushing people to think about issues in a more positive way, as opposed to embracing a rigid right/wrong dichotomy.

“One thing we don’t say in the paper is that organizations shouldn’t engage in social issues,” Hedden cautioned. “Organizations can have a really important role to play in making positive changes in society, and we think that’s great.”