Kiara Hernandez (APRW)
Date and Time
Location
Zoom link for meeting below.
Today's speaker
Kiara Hernandez, "Collective Bargaining Amidst Social Difference: How Ethnoracial Heterogeneity Shapes Individual and Collective Decision Making"
Abstract
A limited number of empirical studies find that greater workplace ethnoracial diversity is associated with less support for unionization and lower rates of labor union election success. Why? Moving away from institutional actors like employers and unions and towards workers themselves, unionization is conceptualized as a process of engaging in cooperation across social difference in the service of a shared goal where the monetary payoff is high but risky. Using an online laboratory experiment (n = 530), this paper asks whether more racially diverse workplaces/bargaining units are more likely to face cooperative dilemmas (collective action hypothesis) and whether individuals in racially diverse workplaces are more likely to exhibit costly in-group biases towards co-ethnics at the expense of the individual and unit’s overall welfare (zero-sum reasoning and in-group preferences hypothesis). Participants engage in a public goods game for three successive rounds. Round 1 asks players to form a private, individual decision about whether to negotiate for a certain amount of money individually or collectively with other players on their assigned team without additional information about the team. Round 2 is the same task but reveals the racial identities of the team members. Assigned team ethnoracial heterogeneity is varied by the experimenter. Both rounds simulate the process by which individuals decide to first take on a risky behavior, akin to signing a union authorization card, and establish baseline risk preferences. Then, participants receive information about the risk preferences of their teammates, such that one member’s preferences are in alignment with those of the participant and the co-ethnicity of the aligned member is randomized. Round 3 asks players to communicate as a group and make a negotiation proposal to the experimenter. The goal here is twofold. First, this simulates the process of actually engaging in the collective bargaining process. Second, this tests whether participants themselves update their own preferences given the revelation of those of their team members. Specific attention is paid to whether updating occurs depending on whether the member in agreement is a co-ethnic or not. The experiment focuses on the role that ethnoracial heterogeneity (homogeneity) plays in shaping both decisions to partake in bargaining and the outcome of bargaining, as well as potential explanatory mechanisms. As such, it builds on the literature about ethnic preferences under conditions of risk and uncertainty.
The American Politics Research Workshop (Gov 3004) meets all academic year, Tuesdays, 12:00–2:00 PM, in CGIS K354. This workshop presents an opportunity for graduate students and Harvard faculty to present and receive feedback on their current research. The workshop highlights key theoretical and empirical findings from Harvard affiliates on topics related to American politics.
All interested Harvard affiliates are invited to attend.