the effects of group racial composition on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and career...

http://wox.sagepub.com/Work and Occupations

http://wox.sagepub.com/content/26/2/187The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/0730888499026002003

1999 26: 187Work and OccupationsCHARLES W. MUELLER, ASHLEY FINLEY, RODERICK D. IVERSON and JAMES L. PRICE

Commitment: The Case of TeachersThe Effects of Group Racial Composition on Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, and Career

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:Work and OccupationsAdditional services and information for

http://wox.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://wox.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

http://wox.sagepub.com/content/26/2/187.refs.htmlCitations:

What is This?

- May 1, 1999Version of Record >>

at Gazi University on August 20, 2014wox.sagepub.comDownloaded from at Gazi University on August 20, 2014wox.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://wox.sagepub.com/

http://wox.sagepub.com/content/26/2/187

http://www.sagepublications.com

http://wox.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

http://wox.sagepub.com/subscriptions

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://wox.sagepub.com/content/26/2/187.refs.html

http://wox.sagepub.com/content/26/2/187.full.pdf

http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml



WORK AND OCCUPATIONSMueller et al. / EFFECTS OF GROUP RACEWe examine the effect of the school racial composition of teachers and the school racial composi-tion of students on the job satisfaction, school commitment, and career commitment of teachersin 405 schools in a large urban school system. We rely on arguments from relational demographytheory, racial prejudice literature, and status characteristics theory, which identify variablesthat mediate this observed relationship between racial composition and satisfaction and com-mitment. Consistent with the nonsymmetry argument, racial composition effects are found forWhite but not Black teachers. The most support is found for the relational demography andracial prejudice claims that White teachers “mismatched” to contexts where their race is notdominant experience greater role conflict, less autonomy, inadequate resources, and reducedcoworker support. These work conditions then reduce their job satisfaction and school commit-ment. Commitment to one’s teaching career is not affected by school racial composition,however.

The Effects of Group Racial Compositionon Job Satisfaction, OrganizationalCommitment, and Career CommitmentThe Case of Teachers

CHARLES W. MUELLERASHLEY FINLEYUniversity of Iowa

RODERICK D. IVERSONUniversity of Melbourne

JAMES L. PRICEUniversity of Iowa

H omogeneity of members in a group is argued, and found, to producepositive sentiments on the part of the group members sharing the homo-

geneous characteristic. In addition, these positive sentiments are expected

Authors’ Note: Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 1997 AmericanSociological Association Meetings in Toronto, Canada, and the 1998 Academy ofManagement Meetings in San Diego. The data used in the study were collected with

WORK AND OCCUPATIONS, Vol. 26 No. 2, May 1999 187-219© 1999 Sage Publications, Inc.

187

at Gazi University on August 20, 2014wox.sagepub.comDownloaded from


to increase the satisfaction of these members and increase their commitmentto the group (Jackson, 1991; Tsui, Egan, & O’Reilly, 1992; Tsui, Egan, & Por-ter, 1994). A group member who does not exhibit the homogeneous charac-teristic (there is a mismatch), however, is found to have less positive senti-ments and thus reduced satisfaction and commitment to the group. Althoughthe characteristics defining homogeneity have varied considerably acrossstudies, probably those receiving the most attention are gender (e.g., Kanter,1977; Tsui et al., 1992; Wharton & Baron, 1987) and race (e.g., Murray,1982; Tsui et al., 1992), both of which are known to be crucial segmentingcharacteristics in the formation of groups (Tsui et al., 1992, 1994). Our focusis race homogeneity and its effect on the satisfaction and commitment ofgroup members.

Our purpose is to push beyond just showing that this relationship exists toshowing why the relationship exists. To do this, we study teachers acrosspublic schools with different racial compositions. We show that argumentsfrom relational demography, theories of racial prejudice, and status charac-teristics theory are valuable in understanding the effects of group racialhomogeneity/heterogeneity. We address three issues in this research tradi-tion. The first concerns how group homogeneity is conceptualized. Homoge-neity/heterogeneity of a work group is almost always defined by characteris-tics of coworkers. The implicit assumption seems to be that the personinteracts the most with coworkers, and this is the source of positive or nega-tive sentiments. This assumption, however, is not valid for work settingswhere most of one’s time is spent with clients rather than coworkers. Forexample, teachers spend most of their time with students, not with otherteachers. In such settings, it is important to assess whether the expectedeffects are supported for the homogeneity/heterogeneity of the clients theperson works with, as well as examine the magnitude of these effects relativeto coworker composition effects. The second issue concerns the processwhereby group composition affects member satisfaction and commitment.Research consistently shows a relationship between group composition andmember behaviors and attitudes, but there is much less empirical examina-tion of the processes operating to account for the relationship. We draw onrelational demography literature and racial prejudice literature to hypothe-size intervening variables between the racial homogeneity of coworkers andworker satisfaction and commitment, and we draw from status characteristics

188 WORK AND OCCUPATIONS

grant support from the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation of Chicago. This article was com-pleted while Iverson was on Special Studies Program leave in the Sociology Depart-ment at the University of Iowa.



theory to hypothesize the variables that intervene between client compositionand worker satisfaction and commitment. The third issue has received moreattention, but the findings have been mixed. It concerns what is referred to asthe nonsymmetry hypothesis. For example, Whites in Black-dominant set-tings have been found to react negatively, whereas Blacks in White-dominantsettings often do not react as negatively. We rely on the racial prejudice litera-ture and “culture shock” arguments (Dworkin, 1987) for understanding thenonsymmetry relationship.

Data for teachers in schools with different teacher and different studentracial compositions are analyzed to address these issues. In particular, westudy the effect of racial composition on teacher job satisfaction (the degreeto which teachers like their job), school commitment (the degree to whichteachers are loyal to the school where they teach) and career commitment (thedegree to which teachers are loyal to the teaching profession). Consistentwith past research and the nonsymmetry hypothesis, we find that White, butnot Black, teachers have their job satisfaction and school commitmentreduced when teaching in other-race dominant schools. As hypothesized, thisracial composition effect is explained by a combination of inadequateresources, increased role conflict, reduced autonomy, and reduced coworkersupport—variables specified as intervening in the relational demography andracial prejudice literature. As we discuss in the conclusions, these findingsare not only important in providing empirical support for intervening mecha-nisms that have only been inferred indirectly, but the findings also haveimportant policy implications for school racial integration strategies and forthe “organizational design of schools” controversy.

MEDIATORS OF THE EFFECTOF GROUP RACIAL COMPOSITION

What mediates the effect of group composition on satisfaction and com-mitment is of central interest to us. Especially helpful in addressing this ques-tion are (a) the relational demography literature and the theories it is based on(see O’Reilly, Caldwell, & Barnett, 1989; Pfeffer, 1983), (b) the emergenceof racial prejudice literature initiated by the work of Blumer (1958), and (c)status characteristics theory in social psychology (Berger, Fisek, Norman, &Zelditch, 1977). In terms of the setting we are interested in, the first two argu-ments are most useful in identifying variables that mediate the effect ofteacher racial composition, whereas the status characteristics theory helpsexplain the effect of student racial composition.

Mueller et al. / EFFECTS OF GROUP RACE 189



RELATIONAL DEMOGRAPHY

Arguments from the relational demography literature and its precursorssuggest that the social interaction patterns among group members are the keyintervening factor. For Homans (1950), the interacting itself produces posi-tive sentiments toward others. Who the other group members are is critical inByrne’s (1971) similarity-attraction paradigm, where similar attitudes leadto reciprocal attraction, which in turn leads to increased communication, highsocial integration, and desire to maintain group affiliation (Tsui et al., 1992).Self-categorization theory and social identity theory similarly argue thatinteracting with others with similar characteristics reinforces one’s self-identity and self-esteem (Messick & Mackie, 1989; Tajfel & Turner, 1986;Tsui et al., 1994; Turner, 1985; Wharton & Baron, 1987). The basic argumentis that people categorize according to various attributes; they place them-selves in these categories and gain social identity as a consequence of thiscategory membership. Interacting with others with similar characteristicsthen reinforces self-identity, increases group integration, and increases groupcohesiveness (Jackson, 1991), which in turn produces satisfaction and com-mitment to the group. This is achieved by constant comparison and evalua-tion between the in-group and some relevant out-groups (Tajfel & Turner,1986), where the in-group is defined as the clique with which the individualidentifies. Empirical support for the hypothesized effect of group composi-tion comes from studies that have found increased satisfaction (Jackson,1991; Tsui, et al., 1992, 1994) and organizational attachment and decreasedturnover within homogeneous groups (see Jackson, 1991; O’Reilly et al.,1989; Tsui et al., 1994).

Kanter (1977), who also is interested in the effect of the demographiccomposition of one’s group, similarly stresses the interaction patterns asintervening, but her discussion points us more directly to variables we couldmeasure that capture the linking mechanisms. Specifically, Kanter arguesthat an imbalanced composition enlarges the gap in resource power and inter-actional advantage between the dominant and minority groups. These inter-action advantages can be captured by degree of coworker support and degreeof role conflict. Also, the power advantages associated with a racial matchresult in more resources and greater control (autonomy) over one’s ownactivities. In sum, we are led to predict that those in the dominant group (amatched situation) will more often experience coworker support, less roleconflict, adequate resources, and greater autonomy, all of which will increasesatisfaction and commitment (Kanter, 1977; Stephan, 1978).




RACIAL PREJUDICE ARGUMENTS

Certain theories explaining racial prejudice (e.g., Blalock, 1956, 1957,1967; Blumer, 1958; Lieberson, 1980; Quillian, 1995) rely on argumentsabout the size of the subordinate group relative to the dominant group. Themajor claim is that prejudice is largely a collective phenomenon thatincreases for the dominant group toward the subordinate group as the size ofthe subordinate group increases. There are two variables that intervenebetween size of the subordinate group and the prejudice expressed by thedominant group. First, as the size of the subordinate group increases, thedominant group perceives a greater threat of competition for scarceresources. Second, also as the size of the subordinate group increases, thepotential for subordinate group political mobilization increases. Both ofthese outcomes are perceived as threats to the dominant group and thus willlead to greater prejudice toward the subordinate group on the part of themajority group. Applying this logic to our dependent variables, we hypothe-size that dominant group members in settings where the subordinate is themajority group (White teachers in settings where non-White teachers are thedominant group) will perceive threats to their control of resources and willperceive loss of control in their work situation. These in turn will reduce theirjob satisfaction and commitment to the organization. Adequacy of resourcesand autonomy, as described above in the discussion of Kanter, can be used tocapture altered resources and loss of control, respectively.

The overlap of variables with those in the relational demography argu-ment suggests that the two theories are complementary rather than competingexplanations for the relationship. The racial prejudice argument, however, incombination with Dworkin’s (1987) culture shock explanation, helpsaccount for the nonsymmetry findings—that a mismatch for Whites has astronger effect than a mismatch for Blacks (Tsui et al., 1992). In U.S. society,White is the culturally dominant race even in settings where Blacks dominatenumerically. Hoffman (1985) suggests that because Blacks are used to beingin the minority, being in a White-dominant group setting is nothing unusualand not likely to decrease satisfaction or loyalty. Whites, however, are notused to being in settings where they are outnumbered and where a differentculture predominates. Because this different context is not a comfortable onefor them, and is even one where they perceive their authority and access toresources as threatened, their satisfaction and commitment will be reducedrelative to being in White-dominant settings.1




STATUS CHARACTERISTICS ANDSTUDENT RACIAL COMPOSITION

The above arguments, although valuable in understanding the effect ofcoworker racial composition, are much less helpful for understanding theeffects of student racial composition. It is difficult to argue that student racialcomposition affects teacher interaction patterns with other teachers oradministrators, that it threatens resources, or that it affects teacher autonomy.How, then, can student racial composition be expected to influence teachersatisfaction and commitment?

If we assume that teachers will be more satisfied with their jobs and morecommitted to their schools if their students are motivated, are not disciplineproblems, and are academically capable, then racial composition can beexpected to influence satisfaction and commitment.2 There are two accountsfor how this can happen. First, there is considerable evidence that Black stu-dents are lower performers in school and on ability measures used in educa-tional settings (Fischer et al., 1996). Consistent with our assumption, then,teachers in Black-student dominant schools will be less satisfied and lesscommitted than teachers in non-Black-dominant schools. Second, even insettings where there are no performance differences by race, status character-istics theory (Berger et al., 1977; Foschi, 1989) argues that in group task set-tings, diffuse status characteristics such as race trigger members’ expecta-tions of behavior and performance for those with these characteristics(Ridgeway & Walker, 1995). Given that these expectations are culturallydetermined, teachers in schools where most of the students are Black willgeneralize from the diffuse characteristic of race and perceive the students tobe less motivated, less disciplined, and of lower ability. Research, in fact, hasshown that Black students are consistently ranked lower in performance thanWhite students by both White and Black teachers (Alexander, Entwisle, &Thompson, 1987). Given the above assumption that these student character-istics are important to teachers, this perception of lower student quality,regardless of whether it is based on reality, will be translated into lower jobsatisfaction and lower commitment to that school.3

In sum, we have identified the processes that connect racial group compo-sition and the group member outcomes of job satisfaction and school com-mitment. The arguments rest on complementary relational demography andracial prejudice claims about the racial composition of coworkers affectinginteraction patterns (as captured by coworker support and role conflict), con-trol over one’s work activities (as captured by autonomy), and competitionfor resources (as captured by resource inadequacy). The relationship of clientracial composition and teacher satisfaction and commitment rests on knownrace performance differences and status characteristics theory, both of which




suggest that teacher perceptions of student quality intervene between racialcomposition and teacher satisfaction and commitment.

TEACHER SATISFACTION AND COMMITMENT

A complete review of the teacher satisfaction and commitment literature(see, for example, Conley & Cooper, 1991; Dworkin, 1980, 1987) is beyondthe scope of this article, but it is important to document that the variables wehave identified as mediating are important determinants of satisfaction andcommitment for teachers. The positive effect of autonomy and participationin decision making has probably received the most attention (Firestone,1991; Firestone & Pennell, 1993; Hart, 1994; Rosenholtz & Simpson, 1990;Rowan, 1990). The idea that teachers who are involved in collaborativeactivities and are receiving collegial support are the most satisfied and com-mitted is firmly grounded in the education literature (Firestone & Pennell,1993; Hart, 1994; Rosenholtz, 1987). Adequate resources to do one’s job alsois known to increase the satisfaction and commitment of teachers (Firestone,1991). Factors such as goal congruence (Hart, 1994), feedback (Firestone &Pennell, 1993), and reasonable and clear expectations for teachers (Fire-stone, 1991) all increase satisfaction and commitment. This is consistent withus identifying role conflict as an intervening factor that reduces satisfactionand commitment. Finally, Ostroff (1992) found positive relationships ofteacher satisfaction and commitment with indicators of student quality (read-ing and math skills, discipline problems, and attendance rates).4

HYPOTHESES

The main hypothesis is that teachers working in schools where their ownrace is dominant will be more satisfied with their jobs and committed to thatschool than teachers in schools where another race is dominant. However, asdescribed for the nonsymmetry argument, Black teacher satisfaction andcommitment will not be reduced in a non-Black-dominant context to the de-gree they are for a White teacher in a non-White-dominant setting.

Also, based on the claims about mediating variables and nonsymmetry,we hypothesize that White teachers in schools where teachers of their ownrace are dominant will (relative to all other settings) experience and perceivemore support from other teachers (coworker support), less conflict in jobexpectations (role conflict), more adequate resources for doing one’s job, andfewer constraints on how to do one’s job (greater autonomy). Teachers(regardless of race) in schools where the plurality of the students are ethnic or




racial minorities (culturally defined) will perceive lower quality students,and this will result in lower job satisfaction and school commitment.

Finally, we expect racial composition of teachers and students to haveonly a weak (or no) effect on career commitment to teaching. There are tworeasons for hypothesizing this effect. First, teaching represents an occupa-tional labor market in which teachers are relatively free to move from schoolto school within a particular school district, or to another district. The racialcomposition of the current school cannot be expected to have much of aninfluence on commitment to the teaching profession as a whole when suchmobility is possible. Second, following Lawler’s (1992) argument aboutcommitment to nested organizational units, work conditions (racial composi-tion) associated with the more immediate (nested) unit (the school) shouldhave weaker effects on commitment to the more distant unit (the profession).Lawler argues that positive (or negative) attachments are created by the moreimmediate work conditions associated with the local unit (school) rather thanthe more distant unit (profession).

DATA AND METHODS

The data come from one of the largest public school systems in the UnitedStates. Both survey data on individual teachers and data on schools from stateand city records are used. The sample represents the 1,482 classroom teach-ers hired between 1988 and 1990 in the city public school system, a systemthat includes about 600 elementary and secondary schools. The 1,482 teach-ers were mailed a questionnaire in January 1991. A total of 838 teachersreturned questionnaires, representing a 57% response rate. Although theresponse rate is not high, the sample is representative on gender by type ofschool characteristics. In the population of elementary teachers, there are18% males and 82% females; the corresponding sample percentages are 15%and 85%. Among secondary school teachers, the population mix is 46% maleand 54% female; the corresponding percentages in the sample are 48% and52%. The organizational structure of the school system is decentralized inthat the schools have considerable autonomy from the city school system.Each school is a separate physical entity with its own principal, office staff,teaching staff, and elected local school council.

The 838 teachers who responded to the survey represent 405 differentschools in the system. The small number of teachers relative to the number ofschools is due to the fact that these are newly hired teachers across the entiredistrict. Data about the schools were obtained from the State Board of Educa-tion 1989-1990 school year “Report Card” and the Racial/Ethnic Survey




prepared by the staff of the Department of Research, Evaluation, and Plan-ning of the city school district. These school data were matched with theteacher data in the study. Because of missing data the listwise-deletionN inthe analysis is 710.

The actual measures used in the study are given in the appendix. Job satis-faction is the degree to which teachers like their job, and the measure is basedon Brayfield and Rothe (1951). School commitment is the degree of loyaltythe teacher feels toward the school and is measured by four items from Porter,Steers, Mowday, and Boulian (1974). Career commitment is the degree ofloyalty to the teaching profession. Its measure is also based on Porter et al.

The teacher (and student) racial composition of the schools is measuredby information from a series of variables from state and city records indicat-ing the percentage of teachers (and students) in the school in each racial cate-gory. For example, for a given teacher, we know the percentage of Blackteachers in the school, the percentage of Black students in the school, thepercentage of Hispanic teachers, the percentage of Hispanic students, and soon. We categorize a school as racially homogeneous in a particular race whenat least 40% of the teachers (students) are of the same race, and no other racialcategory constitutes 40%. The context is considered heterogeneous if noracial group makes up more than 40% of the total composition. Althoughusing the 40% cutoff may seem arbitrary, there is no established theoreticalor empirical basis in the literature for any other criterion.5 We also reportresults based on changing this cutoff to 50% and to 60%. The measurementof homogeneity/heterogeneity applies separately to the racial compositionof the teachers and of the students. For example, a school could be White-dominant with regard to teachers, but Black-dominant with regard tostudents.

What is important for predicting group member differences is whether theteacher is in a school where his or her race is dominant (where there is racialhomogeneity defined by the teacher’s own race). That is, we want to know ifthere is a match or mismatch of the teacher’s race relative to the race of thedominant group of the students and the teachers in the teacher’s school. Fig-ure 1 below shows four basic racial composition situations teachers can findthemselves in and defines these in terms of the match or mismatchdistinction.

Our analysis is limited to examining racial composition effects for Blackand White teachers. We operationalize these Figure 1 match-mismatch cate-gories as a set of dummy variables, representing the teacher race by schoolracial composition categories and an “other” category.6

The labels used to identify the race by racial composition categories (seeTable 1) indicate the race of the teacher (BT: Black teacher; WT: White




teacher), whether the teacher is the same race as the dominant race of theteachers (ST) or different from the dominant race of teachers (DT), andwhether the teacher is the same race as the dominant race of students (SS) ordifferent from the dominant race of the students in the school (DS). The omit-ted (reference) category is WT-ST-SS (i.e., White teachers in schools whereWhite teachers are dominant [ST] and White students are dominant [SS]).For our sample, there were no White teachers in schools where White stu-dents were dominant but non-White teachers were dominant. Thus, there isno dummy variable for this category (cell 2 in Figure 1). Also, the numbers ofBlack teachers in cells 2 and 3 of Figure 1 were small so we combined them (n=13) to form the dummy variable BT-MIX. Finally, cases for which there wasno racial dominance of either teachers or students were placed in the “other”dummy variable category. This residual category (n= 95) also includes teach-ers for whom race is not known. Table 1 shows the number of teachers in eachof these racial composition categories.

Five measures capture the variables believed to mediate the effect ofracial composition on teacher satisfaction and commitment.7 Autonomy,measured by a scale from Tetrick and LaRocco (1987), is the degree towhichteachers are free to make decisions about their job activities. The social


Dominant Teacher Racial CompositionDominant StudentRacial Composition Same as Teacher Different than Teacher

Same as Teacher (1) Match with both (2) Mixed: match with students;teachers and students mismatch with teachers

Different than Teacher (3) Mixed: match with (4) Mismatch with both teachersteachers; mismatch and studentswith students

Figure 1: Teacher match and mismatch combinations for dominant teacher ra-cial composition and dominant student racial composition (match ormismatch is defined with reference to the teacher’s own race)

NOTE:(1) Match (t)-Match (s):Teacher is in a school where more than 40% of the teach-ers are of the same race as the teacher, and where more than 40% of the students are ofthe same race as the teacher (and no other race has 40%); (2) Mismatch (t)-Match (s):Teacher is in a school where less than 40% of the teachers are of the same race as theteacher, but more than 40% of the students are of the same race as the teacher; (3)Match (t)-Mismatch (s):Teacher is in a school where more than 40% of the teachers areof the same race as the teacher, but less than 40% of the students are of the same raceas the teacher; (4) Mismatch (t)-Mismatch (s): Teacher is in a school where less than40% of the teachers are of the same race as the teacher, and less than 40% of the stu-dents are of the same race as the teacher; and (5) Residual (not shown): Schools forwhich there is no dominant race.



interaction patterns among teachers in the school are captured with co-worker support, the degree to which other teachers can be relied on to help theteacher, and role conflict, the degree to which the teacher receives conflictingjob requests from coworkers. The items for role conflict come from Kahn,Wolfe, Quinn, Snoek, and Rosenthal (1964), whereas the coworker supportscale was developed for this study. Another measure developed for this studyis used for resource inadequacy, the degree to which needed resources are notavailable. Teacher perception of student quality is measured by a scale thatcombines six Likert-type items developed for this study about disciplineproblems, ability of students, and motivation of students.

To reduce the possibility of spurious effects, we control on several othercontext characteristics of the schools and several characteristics of the teach-ers (see Ostroff, 1992, for discussion of controls in similar research). Fiveschool characteristics are controlled. Teacher/student ratio is a measure ofschool quality. Attendance rate is a measure of school student quality. Per-centage of the students receiving welfare is a measure of the socioeconomiccomposition of the students in a school. School size (logged number of stu-dents) is a measure of scale of school operations.8 Finally, a dummy variablefor school type is used to indicate if the school is an elementary or secondaryschool. Five teacher characteristics are controlled. Pay is yearly teaching sal-ary, based on midpoints for pay categories and a Pareto estimate for theopen-ended upper category. Gender is a dummy variable with female coded 1.Teaching experience is total number of years in the teaching profession.Teaching experience squared is also included because of a nonlinear relation-ship with satisfaction and commitment. Tenure is the number of years taughtin the city school system. Education is years of formal schooling. Finally,positive affectivity is the degree to which the person is generally happy. Thisis considered to be a fairly stable personality trait that needs to be controlledto ensure that differences in job satisfaction and commitment are not due sim-ply to differences in tendencies to be positive (Staw, Bell, & Clausen, 1986;Watson, Pennebaker, & Folger, 1987; Williams, Gavin, & Williams, 1996).The three-item scale is based on personal communication with David Wat-son. Table 1 presents means and standard deviations for all variables.

Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis is used to analyze thedata. We followed a strategy of examining the mean differences in job satis-faction, school commitment, and career commitment for the teacher race byschool racial composition categories described above. This was accom-plished by including the dummy variables to represent teacher race by racialcomposition categories and then systematically controlling for sets of vari-ables that could either have produced a spurious relationship between racial




composition and the three dependent variables or could be mediating therelationship.

Because the reference category is for White teachers in White-dominantschools, the coefficients in the equations for the dummy variables should beinterpreted as deviations from this category. However, because our hypothe-ses are about within-race differences, we tested for Black teacher differencesfrom the category of Black teachers in Black-dominant schools using appro-priatet tests (Neter, Kutner, Nachsheim, & Wasserman, 1996, p. 466), ratherthan from the reference category (White teachers in White-dominant


TABLE 1: Means and Standard Deviations for Variables ( N = 710)

Variable Mean Standard Deviation

Job satisfaction 16.337 2.720School commitment 14.811 3.403Career commitment 12.941 1.826Racial compositiona

WT-ST-SS (69) .097 .296WT-DT-DS (102) .144 .351WT-ST-DS (231) .325 .469BT-ST-SS (165) .232 .423BT-DT-DS (32) .045 .208BT-MIX (16) .023 .149Other (95) .134 .341

Pay 26624.800 5375.822Female .799 .401Education 17.299 1.059Years-Teacher 6.777 3.804Years-Teacher2 60.372 45.432Tenure 4.338 3.707Positive affectivity 12.183 1.755Teachers/students .072 .072Attendance rate 90.620 5.587Percentage on welfare 69.468 27.451Number of students (ln) 6.639 .581Secondary school .832 .374Perception of student quality 16.886 4.893Autonomy 10.069 2.451Coworker support 11.113 2.454Role conflict 2.417 .959Resource inadequacy 9.280 3.004

a. White teachers in White teacher majority and White student majority schools is thereference category. WT = White Teacher; BT = Black Teacher; ST = teacher is samerace as the majority teacher race; DT = teacher is a different race than the race of themajority of teachers; SS = teacher is same race as the majority student race; DS =teacher is a different race than the race of the majority of students;MIX = combines cells 2and 3 of Figure 1.Other = residual category;see text.Totals are given in parentheses.



schools), which is automatically the comparison group unless special testsare conducted. Similar contrast tests were used when between-race compari-sons were made.

To repeat our expectations prior to presenting the results, we expectteacher perceptions of student quality to mediate the effect of student racialcomposition. According to the racial prejudice argument, autonomy andinadequacy of resources are expected to mediate the effect of teacher racialcomposition. Following Kanter (1977) and the relational demography argu-ment, role conflict, coworker support, autonomy, and inadequacy ofresources should mediate the effect of teacher racial composition on job sat-isfaction and school commitment.

RESULTS

Table 2 shows the zero-order effects of racial composition on the three de-pendent variables, with the White teachers compared with other White teach-ers and Black teachers compared with other Black teachers. Tables 3 through5 show, for each dependent variable, the mediating effects of the sets of vari-ables identified for each of the three explanations. Following well-established logic (Alwin & Hauser, 1975), adding the intervening variablesto reduced form equations allows for assessing whether the racial composi-tion effects are mediated. Concretely, if the racial composition effects foundin the first equation in Tables 3 through 5 are eliminated when the interveningvariables are added, we may say that they did, indeed, mediate the racial com-position effect.9

JOB SATISFACTION

Table 2 shows that White teachers in White-teacher and White-studentdominant schools (the reference category) have higher job satisfaction thanWhite teachers in schools where both White teachers and White students arein the minority (–.90), and in schools where White teachers are dominant, butWhite students are in the minority (–1.20). However, there are no job satisfac-tion differences among Black teachers across schools with different racialcompositions (as shown by thet tests comparing just Black teachers). Thefindings for White teachers are consistent with the basic hypothesis thatbeing the same race as the dominant group (i.e., being a part of the homoge-neous group) increases job satisfaction. Not finding these effects for Blackteachers is consistent with the nonsymmetry hypothesis. That is, that thedominant race has no effect on the job satisfaction of Black teachers.




The first equation in Table 3 is the reduced form baseline model, because itdoes not include the intervening variables. Controlling for the five interven-ing variables (Equation 2) results in the one significant White teacher differ-ence going to nonsignificance and in dramatically reducing the size of theeffect for White teachers in non-White dominant schools. This means that theschools that have dominant-White teacher and White student compositionsrepresent contexts in which White teachers generally have more resources,perceive higher quality students, have more autonomy, have more coworkersupport, and experience less role conflict relative to White teachers in compa-rable settings with non-White-dominant compositions. These differencesthen account for the higher satisfaction of the White teachers in the “mostlyWhite” schools.

The other equations in Table 3 allow us to draw some inferences aboutwhich of the theories receives the most support. These data support the rela-tional demography argument best; there is still a significant difference inEquations 3 and 4, which represent status characteristics and racial prejudicearguments, respectively. It is the combination of reduced coworker support


TABLE 2: Zero-Order Effects of School Racial Composition on Job Satisfaction,School Commitment, and Career Commitment: Unstandardized Co -efficients ( N = 710)

Racial Job School CareerCompositiona Satisfaction Commitment Commitment

WT-DT-DS (102) –.905* –2.627*** –.214WT-ST-DS (231) –1.197*** –1.846*** –.507*Other (95) –.365 –.949* –.515*BT-ST-SS (165) –.635 –1.567 –.693BT-DT-DS (32) –.633 –1.266 –1.077BT-MIX (16) –.914 –2.391 –.233Constant 17.101 16.391 13.420R2 .020 .043 .018Adjusted R2 .012 .035 .010

NOTE: Each of the dependent variables (job satisfaction, school commitment, and ca-reercommitment) was regressed on the dummy variables for school racial composition.a. White teachers in White teacher dominant and White student dominant schools isthe reference category (n = 69) for all categories, although the tests are within-race spe-cific. WT = White Teacher; BT = Black Teacher; ST = teacher is same race as the domi-nant teacher race; DT = teacher is a different race than the dominant race of the teach-ers; SS = teacher is same race as the dominant student race; DS = teacher is a differentrace than the dominant race of the students; MIX = combines cells 2 and 3 of Figure 1.Other: = residual category; see text. Ns are given in parentheses.*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.



TABLE 3: Regression Results: Comparison Table for Job Satisfaction (sets of intervening variables)

Equation 1 Equation 2 Equation 3 Equation 4 Equation 5Equation Status Racial Prejudice Relational Demography

Without Intervening All Characteristics (autonomy, resource (coworker support, role conflict,Racial Compositiona Variables Variables (student quality) inadequacy) resource inadequacy, autonomy)

WT-DT-DS (139) –.674 –.033 –.318 –.278 –.173WT-ST-DS (223) –.989** –.430 –.766* –.623* –.475Other (97) –.225 –.394 –.713* –.151 –.004BT-ST-SS (163) –.382 –.205 –.370 –.309 –.180BT-DT-DS (38) –.533 –.426 –.562 –.479 –.382BT-MIX (13) –.949 –.378 –.992 –.234 –.186Payb .241 .000 .012 .093 .039Female –.068 –.053 –.040 –.035 –.076Education .010 .010 .009 –.002 .014Years-Teacher –.261 –.216 –.260 –.224 –.207Years-Teacher2 .022 .018 .021 .020 .018Tenure –.012 .003 –.015 .004 .011Positive affect .476*** .344*** .376*** .411*** .396***Teachers/students –1.218 –.820 –.582 –1.103 –1.325Attendance rate .081** .044* .055* .065** .057*Percentage on welfare .000 .002 .003 .001 .000Number of students (ln) –.156 –.097 –.139 –.109 –.101Secondary school –.643 –.766* –.787* –.735 –.681Perception of student quality .162*** .225***

(continued)201

at Gazi U

niversity on August 20, 2014

wox.sagepub.com

Dow

nloaded from


202 TABLE 3 Continued



Resource inadequacy –.106*** –.183*** –.154***Autonomy .197*** .286*** .243***Coworker support .077* .100**Role conflict –.237** –.311**Constant 5.071 5.887 5.027 6.062 6.488R2 .134 .361 .279 .274 .296Adjusted R2 .112 .340 .259 .253 .273

a. White teachers in White teacher dominant and White student dominant schools is the reference category (n = 69) for all categories, althoughthe tests are within-race specific. WT = White Teacher; BT = Black Teacher; ST = teacher is same race as the majority teacher race; DT = teacheris a different race than the race of the majority of teachers; SS = teacher is same race as the majority student race; DS = teacher is a different racethan the race of the majority of students;MIX = combines cells 2 and 3 of Figure 1.Other = residual category;see text.Ns are given in parentheses.b. Pay coefficient is multiplied by 10,000.*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

at Gazi U


wox.sagepub.com

Dow

nloaded from


and autonomy with the increase in role conflict and resource inadequacy forWhite teachers in student race-different schools that decreases their job satis-faction. This is precisely the racial composition context where perceptions ofstudent quality should have been, but was not, the mediating variable. It mustbe kept in mind, of course, that actual student quality is largely controlledwith the school context variables.

It must also be noted that the changes in theR2s, as well as the significanceand size of the mediating variable effects, clearly show their importance inexplaining job satisfaction. It is well established that work condition vari-ables such as these are strongly related to job satisfaction. Our purpose was toassess whether school racial composition has an effect through these condi-tions. The results indicate that this is what is happening for White teachers.10

SCHOOL COMMITMENT

The findings for school commitment (see Table 4) are similar to those forjob satisfaction but are perhaps more dramatic in showing the hypothesizedeffects. Based on the within-Black teacher tests (again,t tests were conductedseparately for White and Black teacher differences), there are no differencesin school commitment for Black teachers in schools with different racialcompositions (see Table 2 and Equations 1 and 2 in Table 4). As with job sat-isfaction, there is support for the nonsymmetry argument that the degree ofracial homogeneity is not translated into differences in school commitmentfor Blacks.

Without controls (see Table 2), White teachers in White-teacher andWhite-student dominant schools (the reference category) are more commit-ted to their schools than White teachers in other racial composition configu-rations (and higher than any of the other racial composition categories, infact). Controlling for teacher characteristics and contextual factors (Equation 1of Table 4) shows that the two “White-teacher in non-White-dominant”schools still have White teachers with lower school commitment than Whiteteachers in the “mostly White” schools, although the differences have beenreduced by about one half (compare with Table 2 results). These significant dif-ferences are reduced to nonsignificance controlling for the five interveningvariables (Equation 2 in Table 4), and the remaining differences are small.

In support of the status characteristics argument (Equation 3 of Table 4),the significant difference (–.975) between “White-dominant” and “White-dominant except for students” contexts goes to nonsignificance with the con-trol for teacher perceptions of student quality. However, this difference andthe one between “White teacher in White-dominant” and “White teacher innon-White-dominant” settings is reduced the most with the four relational




204 TABLE 4: Regression Results: Comparison Table for School Commitment (sets of intervening variables)



WT-DT-DS (139) –1.441** –.593 –1.034* –.876* –.717WT-ST-DS (223) –.975* –.288 –.720 –.510 –.327Other (97) –.141 –.269 –.698 –.206 .075BT-ST-SS (163) –.340 –.298 –.327 –.437 –.275BT-DT-DS (38) –.749 –.713 –.783 –.853 –.675BT-MIX (13) –1.618 –1.068 –1.667* –.844 –.899Payb .286 –.095 .014 .006 –.062Female –.298 –.322 –.266 –.263 –.342Education –.157 –.111 –.158 –.134 –.107Years-Teacher –.528* –.469** –.527** –.517** –.461**Years-Teacher2 .048** .042** .046** .047** .042**Tenure .019 .046 .016 .046 .053Positive affectivity .403*** .221*** .290*** .301*** .267***Teachers/students 2.621 2.981* 3.346* 2.468 2.537Attendance rate .154*** .106*** .124*** .130*** .118***Percentage on welfare –.016** –.013** –.014** –.014** –.014**Number of students (ln) –.179 –.140 –.160 –.183 –.144Secondary school –.824 –.996* –.989* –1.102* –.921*Perception of student quality .142*** .256***Resource inadequacy –.360*** –.444*** –.402***Autonomy .160*** .266*** .201***Coworker support .219*** .239***

at Gazi U


wox.sagepub.com

Dow

nloaded from


Role conflict –.145 –.210*Constant 2.230 5.386 2.179 7.149 5.915R2 .138 .438 .258 .373 .406Adjusted R2 .116 .419 .238 .355 .387

a. White teachers in White teacher dominant and White student dominant schools is the reference category (n = 69) for all categories, although thetests are within-race specific.WT = White Teacher;BT = Black Teacher;ST = teacher is same race as the majority teacher race;DT = teacher is a dif-ferent race than the race of the majority of teachers;SS = teacher is same race as the majority student race;DS = teacher is a different race than therace of the majority of students; MIX = combines cells 2 and 3 of Figure 1. Other = residual category; see text. Ns are given in parentheses.b. Pay coefficient is multiplied by 10,000.*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

205

at Gazi U


wox.sagepub.com

Dow

nloaded from


demography controls (Equation 5). Finally, it is the control for all five vari-ables (Equation 2) that produces the smallest differences. This suggests thatall five variables are operating to mediate the racial composition effect.11

CAREER COMMITMENT

As hypothesized, the racial composition of the schools has a much weakerinfluence on commitment to the teaching profession (see Table 2). As hasbeen the pattern thus far, there are no within-Black differences (ttests for justBlack teachers in Tables 2 and 5).

For the zero-order relationship in Table 1, White teachers in “mostlyWhite” schools (reference category) are more committed to their teachingcareers than White teachers in schools where White teachers are dominantbut White students are not (–.51). However, once teacher characteristics andcontextual factors are controlled (Equation 1 of Table 5), these White teach-ers have the same level of career commitment as other White teachers acrossother school racial compositions. This means there is no racial compositioneffect for the intervening variables to mediate.

USING OTHER CUTOFFS FOR RACIAL COMPOSITION

The analysis shown in Tables 2 through 5 was conducted using both a 50%cutoff and a 60% cutoff for determining a dominant racial composition.Analysis with the 60% cutoff was not meaningful for the simple reason thatthere were so few cases (n= 14) in the primary comparison group of Whiteteachers in White dominant schools. The 50% cutoff gave basically the sameresults as those reported for the 40% cutoff. The results for school and careercommitment were exactly the same. The results for job satisfaction were thesame in the pattern of coefficient magnitudes for racial composition catego-ries, although the coefficient for WT-ST-DS was significant atp < .10 inEquation 1 in Table 3. This change in significance level was due mainly to thereference category of “dominant White teachers and students” being reducedto 41 instead of 69 cases.12

BETWEEN-RACE DIFFERENCES

With the exception of the nonsymmetry hypothesis, the arguments weassessed did not suggest between-race differences in mean levels of satisfac-tion or commitment. Because of this, the preceding discussion and analysishas presented only within-race differences. The previous research findingsare mixed on race differences in satisfaction and commitment. Dworkin




TABLE 5: Regression Results: Comparison Table for Career Commitment (sets of intervening variables)



WT-DT-DS (139) .119 .227 .128 .147 .191WT-ST-DS (223) –.273 –.112 –.204 –.173 –.123Other (97) –.301 –.356 –.451 –.333 –.254BT-ST-SS (163) –.437 –.442 –.433 –.479 –.435BT-DT-DS (38) –.868 –.871 –.877 –.909 –.859BT-MIX (13) –.123 –.040 –.137 –.028 .010Payb .136 .038 .010 .066 .048Female .289 .280 .298 .296 .274Education –.034 –.018 –.034 –.025 –.017Years-Teacher –.217* –.205 –.217* –.219* –.202Years-Teacher2 .019* .017* .018* .019* .018*Tenure –.039 –.033 –.040 –.032 –.031Positive affectivity .314*** .267*** .284*** .291*** .281***Teachers/students –1.211 –1.119 –1.017 –1.278 –1.251Attendance rate .037* .025 .029 .031* .028Percentage on welfare –.000 .000 .000 .000 .000Number of students (ln) –.114 –.109 –.108 –.121 –.110Secondary school –.159 –.207 –.204 –.237 –.185Perception of student quality .042** .069***

(continued)

207

at Gazi U


wox.sagepub.com

Dow

nloaded from


Resource inadequacy –.095*** –.119*** –.108***Autonomy .016 .046 .028Coworker support .062* .068**Role conflict –.034 –.053Constant 7.558 8.487 7.544 9.025 8.644R2 .142 .209 .172 .190 .199Adjusted R2 .119 .183 .149 .167 .174

a. White teachers in White teacher dominant and White student dominant schools is the reference category (n = 69) for all categories, although thetests are within-race specific.WT = White Teacher;BT = Black Teacher;ST = teacher is same race as the majority teacher race;DT = teacher is a dif-ferent race than the race of the majority of teachers;SS = teacher is same race as the majority student race;DS = teacher is a different race than therace of the majority of students; MIX = combines cells 2 and 3 of Figure 1. Other = residual category; see text. Ns are given in parentheses.b. Pay coefficient is multiplied by 10,000.*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

TABLE 5 Continued



208

at Gazi U


wox.sagepub.com

Dow

nloaded from


(1980), for example, found White teachers to be less committed to teaching(more likely to intend to quit teaching) than Black teachers. A recent nationalstudy (National Center for Education Statistics, 1997), however, found Whitepublic school teachers to be more committed to teaching than minority teach-ers.13Therefore, it is meaningful to ask whether there are between-race differ-ences in levels of job satisfaction, school commitment, and career commit-ment. Conducting the appropriate contrast tests between White and Blackteachers for the three dependent variables (data not shown), and after controlsfor all exogenous and intervening variables, only one between-race differ-ence was found—White teachers in the White-dominant setting are signifi-cantly higher in career commitment than Black teachers in schools with non-Black-teacher and non-Black-student settings (difference of –.871). Overallthen, our data do not support Dworkin’s finding that White teachers are lesscommitted to teaching than Black teachers. We could not, however, controlfor socioeconomic background of the teachers. This was the variableDworkin found to “explain away” the race difference he observed. Dworkinargued that those with lower socioeconomic backgrounds (assumed to beBlacks) have fewer networks that expose them to a variety of work opportuni-ties and, as a consequence, are more satisfied with and committed to whatthey do end up with. The only data we had that might help address this possi-bility is a measure of whether the teacher’s parents had been teachers. Whenwe compared this across the different racial composition categories, how-ever, we found no significant differences. Thus, we continue to argue thatWhite teachers are not less committed to the teaching profession than Blackteachers.

DISCUSSION

Research has consistently shown that group composition defined by raceaffects member behavior and attitudes and does so differently, depending onwhether the member shares the characteristic that defines the dominantgroup. Our findings for teachers in schools that vary considerably in racialcomposition are consistent with past research but expand the understandingof such effects in four significant ways.

First, our data strongly support the nonsymmetry hypothesis. Individualswho are accustomed to being in the minority in society (Blacks in White-dominant situations) are not negatively affected by being in mismatched con-texts; White teachers are. As others (Hoffman, 1985) have argued, Blackteachers seem to have adapted to the variety of racial contexts they find them-selves in, whereas White teachers may experience some form of culture




shock (Dworkin, 1987) when they find themselves in unfamiliar mismatchedcontexts where they are the minority.

Second, and with respect to White teacher differences, much of the pre-vious research only demonstrates that group composition is related to mem-ber behavior and attitudes. The arguments for the relationship, however,often suggest that workplace authority structures, the interaction patterns ofemployees, and differences in resource allocation mediate the relationship.This mediation is precisely what we observed. However, because the mediat-ing variables in the relational demography and racial prejudice argumentsoverlap, it is not possible to say one argument was supported more than theother. What we can say is that White teachers in contexts where others are ofthe same race receive greater coworker support, experience less role conflict,have greater autonomy in decision making, and have adequate resources.These better work conditions then increase their job satisfaction and commit-ment to their school.

Third, we argued that the racial composition of one’s clients should alsobe studied, especially in work contexts where one’s time is spent mainly withclients rather than with coworkers. From status characteristics theory, ourargument for teachers was that the diffuse characteristic of race of the domi-nant group of students, net of actual student quality differences, will lead tolower teacher job satisfaction and school commitment, because teachers willperceive students as less disciplined, less motivated, and of lower ability. Wefound only limited support for this argument, however. It is teacher racialcomposition, which operates through the interaction advantage variables,that has the strongest effect.

Fourth, we have shown that the effect of racial composition is strongest forthe more immediate organizational units—one’s job and the immediate placeof work (the school). This is consistent with other research (U.S. Departmentof Education, 1997) that commitment to one’s teaching career is only weaklyaffected by racial composition. Theoretically, these findings are importantbecause they are consistent with Lawler’s (1992) untested argument aboutdifferent levels of commitment to units nested within a multiple-unit organi-zation. According to his theory, one’s commitment to the organization (posi-tive or negative) is strongest to the immediate unit (the school) in which thesocial interaction occurs. The teaching profession is more “distant” and is notaffected strongly by one’s current teaching situation.

In completing this discussion section, it is important to comment on onepossible threat to the internal validity of our conclusion that school racialcomposition affects job satisfaction and school commitment. Unexamined inour study is another of Dworkin’s arguments (Dworkin, 1980). When hefound that White teachers, compared with other-race teachers, more often




reported that they were assigned to schools at which they preferred not toteach, he concluded that they could be entering the other-race dominantschools with beliefs that those environments will have inadequate resources,low autonomy, poor coworker support, and role conflict. This means thatWhite teachers may be predisposed to be less satisfied and committed, and itis not the racial composition they experienced that was responsible for thedifferences we observed. We could not directly test this account because wedo not have the teachers’expectations at the time of job entry, but we do havedata on whether teachers believe their at-entry job expectations had been metat the time of the survey. Using ANOVA with post hoc Scheffé tests, we com-pared all seven racial composition categories on 14 met expectations aboutjob characteristics and conditions. Counter to Dworkin’s hypothesis, therewere no between-race differences in met expectations for any of the racialcomposition categories. These results lead us to conclude that the kinds ofracial composition effects we found for White teachers are not due to thementering the schools with different expectations.

CONCLUSIONS

In concluding, we want to address policy implications of our findings,offer some suggestions for further research, and also offer several caveats.

Finding that racial composition affects job satisfaction and school com-mitment, but not commitment to the teaching profession, suggests that differ-ent racial compositions of schools will have more short-term than long-termeffects on teachers. Because we know that job satisfaction and commitmentto one’s employer have effects on quitting that employer (see, for example,Hom & Griffeth, 1995; Mueller, Wallace, & Price, 1992), teachers can beexpected to move from school to school because of racial compositions, butthey will not likely leave the teaching profession because of this. On a morenegative note, however, our finding that Black teachers in non-Black schoolsare less committed to a teaching career than White teachers in White-dominant schools suggests that racially integrating predominantly Whiteschools by bringing in Black teachers may add diversity to the teaching staffbut will tend to discourage these Black teachers in terms of remaining inteaching. We could not, however, control for socioeconomic background, asis suggested by Dworkin’s (1980) research in accounting for race differencesin commitment to the teaching profession. It is possible that there is more of aclass effect than a race effect, and this requires additional research.

Our findings also allow us to comment on the debate in the organizationaldesign of schools literature. Rowan (1990) reviews the debate by identifying




two organizational designs offered for improving student achievement in thecontext of schools as loosely coupled organizations (Bidwell, 1965; Lortie,1975; March & Olsen, 1976; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Weick, 1976). Looselycoupled schools provide neither the strict bureaucratic controls found inmany nonprofessional organizations nor the collegial forms of collaborationand control associated with professional organizations. As a consequence,instructional goals are variable and uncertain, and the relationship betweenteacher activities and student achievement is not understood (Bidwell, 1965).The past two decades have witnessed attempts to remedy this weak technol-ogy of instruction. One answer, which Rowan (1990) calls the control strat-egy, emphasizes the “development of an elaborate system of input, behavior,and output controls designed to regulate classroom teaching and standardizestudent opportunities for learning” (p. 354). Another answer, the commit-ment strategy, rejects bureaucratic controls and brings to mind the buzzwords of the 1990s such assite-based managementandvertical teams. Thisdesign “seeks to develop innovative working arrangements that supportteachers’decision making andincrease teachers’ engagement in the tasksof teaching” (Rowan, 1990, p.354). The commitment approach assumesthat a collaborative and participative work setting “will unleash the energyand expertise of committed teachers and thereby lead to improved studentlearning” (Rowan, 1990, p. 354). Our study does not directly speak to thisissue because we have no data on student achievement. However, the impor-tance of autonomy and coworker support as mediators strongly suggests thatthe commitment design that encourages and facilitates professional behaviordoes positively affect satisfaction and commitment. If this satisfaction andcommitment are then translated into improved student learning, then thecommitment design is supported. On the other hand, adequate resources andreduced role conflict also operate as mediators of the racial compositioneffect on satisfaction and commitment. This means that bureaucratic control(that directs resources and clearly defines roles) is not necessarily antitheticalto the idea of satisfied and committed teachers. This has been argued for anddemonstrated by Wallace (1995) in her study of lawyers, which shows a com-patibility between a number of critical professional values and workplacestructures of modern firms. Particularly germane to the debate over controland commitment models for teachers is the argument and supporting datathat formal bureaucratic structures can actually result in satisfaction andcommitment rather than alienation (Lincoln & Kalleberg, 1990). In sum,then, the pitting of control and commitment models for improving studentlearning should not be viewed as an “either-or” dilemma. If we assume thathaving satisfied and committed teachers is a worthwhile goal, for its own




sake as well as for its potential impact on student learning, then perhaps somecombination of the two models is the most reasonable strategy to follow.

We close with several caveats. We admit that the data come from only onecity and thus cannot, without further study, be generalized to other educa-tional contexts. We also cannot generalize these findings to other occupa-tions/professions, although it is likely that the findings better fit occupations,such as nursing and social work, where the employees also work directly withclients. In addition, because our sample was of newly hired teachers, the find-ings may be stronger than would be found for teachers (or any employees)who have longer tenures. This is because both job satisfaction and organiza-tional commitment tend to increase with tenure and because teacher burnoutis greater among inexperienced teachers in large, urban environments(Dworkin, 1994). Also, we were unable to analyze the data with hierarchicallinear models (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992) because of only one teacher sam-pled in most of the schools. Data sets that allow for this need to be obtained sothat contextual and individual effects and standard errors can be properlyestimated. We also admit that we were unable to adequately capture the kindsof political resources identified in the racial prejudice argument. Our mea-sure captures more of the day-to-day resources needed to do one’s job. It islikely that political resources are more important when predicting other de-pendent variables, such as union involvement. Finally, we were unable todetermine conclusively the power of the relational demography and racialprejudice accounts for the effect of racial composition. This is in part due tothe variables that were available in the data set, but also, as we have discussedabove, to the fact that these two explanations are complementary because ofthe overlap in the intervening variables identified. Future research should bedirected at either synthesizing the two arguments or isolating and measuringwhat is unique about each argument.

Acknowledging these caveats does not lessen the importance of our find-ings. The empirical relationship between group racial composition and satis-faction and commitment had been established in the literature. What had notbeen empirically established are the factors that mediate this relationship.Our study empirically demonstrated the importance of these theoreticallygrounded mediating factors.




APPENDIX: Measures

Variables for teachers were measured with a mailed questionnaire; school variableswere measured with state or school system records and reports. For variables mea-sured by multiple items, an R means the item was reverse coded. Unless indicated oth-erwise, the multiple-item scales were based on items with 5-point Likert-style responsecategories going from strongly agree to strongly disagree.

Teacher Racial Composition is based on the percentages of teachers in different ra-cial/ethnic categories (White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Other); Student Racial Composi-tion is the same but for students.As is described in the text, this information is combinedwith data on the race of the teacher to form a series of dummy variables that capturevarious types of teacher matches or mismatches with teacher and student school racialcomposition. See the text for a more complete description.

Job Satisfaction is measured by four items: (1) I find enjoyment in my job, (2) mostdays I am enthusiastic about my job, (3) I am often bored with my job (R), and (4) I feeldissatisfied with my job (R). The alpha is .77.

School Commitment is measured by four items: (1) the school in which I work is thebest of all possible places to work, (2) I do not care about the fate of the school in which Iwork (R), (3) I speak highly of the school in which I work to my friends, and (4) I am proudto tell others I am part of the school in which I work. The alpha is .81.

Career Commitment is measured by three items: (1) I do not care about the fate ofthe teaching profession (R), (2) I speak highly of the teaching profession to my friends,and (3) I am proud to tell others I am part of the teaching profession.The alpha is .72.

Pay is the total yearly income from the school district before taxes and other deduc-tions. Midpoints for pay categories were used, and a Pareto estimate was obtained forthe final open-ended category.

Female is a dummy variable for gender with female coded as 1.

Education is the number of years of formal schooling completed by the teacher.

Years as a Teacher is the total number of years the person has been teaching.

Years as a Teacher-Squared is the squared version of the previous variable.

Tenure is the number of years in the city school system.

Positive Affectivity is measured by three items: (1) for me, life is a great adventure, (2)I live a very interesting life, and (3) I usually find ways to liven up my day.

Teacher/Student Ratio is the number of teachers divided by the number of studentsin the school. The alpha is .61.

Attendance Rate for the school is the aggregate days of student attendance dividedby the sum of the aggregate days of student attendance and aggregate days of studentabsence multiplied by 100.




Percentage on Welfare is the percentage of students in the school who are receivingwelfare.

School Size is the natural logarithm of the total student enrollment in the school.

Secondary School is a dummy variable coded 1 for secondary school, rather thanelementary school.

Student Quality Perceptions is measured with six items: (1) my students have a highability to learn, (2) my students lack basic learning skills (R), (3) my students have manydiscipline problems (R), (4) my students are always well-behaved, (5) my students areapathetic toward their school work (R), and (6) my students have a high motivation tolearn. The alpha is .80.

Autonomy is measured with three items: (1) I never control the scheduling of mywork (R), (2) I have little to no influence over things that affect me on the job (R), and (3) Ihave a lot of input in deciding what tasks or parts of tasks I do. The alpha is .61.

Coworker Support is measured by three items: (1) my coworkers (e.g., other teach-ers) can be relied on when things get tough on my job, (2) my coworkers (e.g., otherteachers) are willing to listen to my job-related problems, and (3) my coworkers (e.g.,other teachers) are helpful to me in getting my job done. The alpha is .78.

Role Conflict is measured by one item: I get conflicting job requests from my cowork-ers (e.g., other teachers).

Resource Inadequacy is measured by three items: (1) I have difficulty getting materi-als (e.g., teaching supplies) I need on my job, (2) I have adequate equipment (e.g.,audiovisual) to do my job (R), and (3) I have enough administrative support (e.g., cleri-cal) to do my job (R). The alpha is .68.

NOTES

1. In the prejudice literature, the dominant group culturally is also usually the dominantgroup numerically. Stated in terms of our school example, the situation is one where greaterprejudice of Whites toward Blacks is expected where Black teachers are 40% of all teachers thanwhere they are only 12% of the total. We, of course, are interested in comparing situations whereBlacks are or are not in the dominant group.

2. This assumption is a reasonable one to make. In a large sample of teachers and schools,Ostroff (1992) found positive relationships of teacher satisfaction and commitment with readingand math skills of the students and negative correlations of satisfaction and commitment withstudent discipline problems and attendance rates.

3. The status characteristics literature is quite explicit in requiring that scope conditions ofthe theory be met to test the theory. These scope conditions are summarized by Ridgeway andWalker (1995). The research we propose is best labeled as an application of the theory, ratherthan a test.

4. In addition to this education research, the more general research on employee job satis-faction and commitment has clearly shown that workplace conditions such as role conflict,




autonomy, coworker support, and adequacy of resources are related to job satisfaction and orga-nizational commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1997; Spector, 1997).

5. The discussion of cutoff points is more often found in the literature on gender. Kanter(1977), for example, identifies highly skewed distributions (85% and more men) as unbalancedand indicative of women as tokens. She refers to a “tilted” composition as one with a 65:35 ratioand a “balanced” ratio as one with a 60-40 split. Her basic argument is that consequences for in-teraction advantages for the dominant group increase the greater the imbalance. She does claimthat these arguments apply to race, as well, but her research is limited to gender. Because of themuch smaller proportion of Blacks in the general population, these kinds of ratios make littlesense. Tomaskovic-Devey (1993), for example, for a Southern population with 22% of the laborforce being Black, defines racially balanced jobs as those that have 11% to 33% Blacks occupy-ing them.

6. Initially, we examined this 2 by 2 classification in Figure 1 separately for White teach-ers, Black teachers, Hispanic teachers, and Asian teachers.

7. These measures all represent employee perceptions. Because the exogenous variablesrepresent more objective measures of the individual or structural features of the schools, we cansafely assume that these perceptions are causally subsequent to these characteristics/conditions.

8. There were other school characteristics that could have been controlled, but they over-lapped conceptually and were empirically collinear with the ones we selected. Other schoolcharacteristics not included were: percentage truant, class size, turnover of students relative tototal enrolment, total number of teachers in the school, and total clerical staff.

9. Although going from significance to nonsignificance is usually required for such aclaim, the size of the reduction provides additional information. Davis (1985) says the partial co-efficient should be zero or trivially small.

10. The strong effect of positive affectivity on job satisfaction is consistent with past re-search; individuals who have positive outlooks also are more satisfied with their jobs. What isimportant, however, is that we find support for the arguments with this controlled. Without itcontrolled, we allow for the possibility that it is systematic differences in teacher personalitiesacross racial composition categories that are responsible for the relationships we observe. Theresults were the same, by the way, with positive affectivity not controlled.

11. We estimated different equations adding one mediating variable at a time in an attemptto tease out which is the most important. The results did not help in identifying one variable asbeing substantially more important than another.

12. We also estimated several equations using continuous variables (e. g., percentage Blackteachers and percentage Black students) rather than the dummy variables for racial compositioncategories. The analysis with continuous variables did not reveal the patterns observed for thedummy variables, however. This suggests to us that there are racial composition thresholds thatare not captured with the continuous variables. This certainly is consistent with arguments likethose of Kanter (1977).

13. The research on race differences in satisfaction and commitment in the general popula-tion also shows mixed results (see Thomas & Holmes, 1992).

REFERENCES

Alexander, K., Entwisle, D., & Thompson, M. (1987). School performance, status relations, andthe structure of sentiment: Bringing the teacher back in.American Sociological Review, 52,665-682.




Alwin, D., & Hauser, R. (1975). The decomposition of effects in path analysis.American Socio-logical Review, 40, 37-47.

Berger, J., Fisek, M. H., Norman, R., & Zelditch, M., Jr. (1977).Status characteristics in socialinteraction: An expectation states approach. New York: Elsevier.

Bidwell, C. (1965). The school as a formal organization. In J. C. March (Ed.),Handbook of or-ganizations(pp. 927-1022). Chicago: Rand McNally.

Blalock, H. M. (1956). Economic discrimination and Negro increase.American SociologicalReview, 21, 584-588.

Blalock, H. M. (1957). Percent non-White and discrimination in the south.American Sociologi-cal Review, 22, 677-682.

Blalock, H. M. (1967). Status inconsistency, social mobility, status integration, and structural ef-fects.American Sociological Review, 32, 790-801.

Blumer, H. (1958). Race prejudice as a sense of group position.The Pacific Sociological Review,1, 3-7.

Brayfield, A. H., & Rothe, H. F. (1951). An index of job satisfaction.Journal of Applied Psychol-ogy, 35, 307-311.

Bryk, A., & Raudenbush, S. (1992).Hierarchical linear models: Applications and data analysismethods. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Byrne, D. (1971).The attraction paradigm. New York: Academic Press.Conley, S. C., & Cooper, B. S. (1991).The school as a work environment: Implications for re-

form. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.Davis, J. (1985).The logic of causal order. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.Dworkin, A. (1980). The changing demography of public school teachers: Some implications

for faculty turnover in urban areas.Sociology of Education,53, 65-73.Dworkin, A. (1987).Teacher burnout in the public schools. Albany: State University of New

York Press.Dworkin, A. (1994). Teacher burnout. In T. Husen & T. N. Postlethwait (Eds.),International en-

cyclopedia of education(2nd ed., pp. 5919-5925). New York: Elsevier Science.Firestone, W. A. (1991). Increasing teacher commitment in urban high schools: Incremental and

restructuring options. In S. C. Conley & B. S. Cooper (Eds.),The school as a work environ-ment: Implications for reform(pp. 142-168). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Firestone, W. A., & Pennell, J. R. (1993). Teacher commitment, working conditions, and differ-ential incentive policies.Review of Educational Research,63, 489-525.

Fischer, C. S., Hout, M., Jankowski, M., Lucas, S., Swindler, A., & Voss, K. (1996).Inequalityby design: Cracking the bell curve myth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Foschi, M. (1989). Status characteristics, standards, and attributions. In J. Berger, M. Zelditch, &B. Anderson (Eds.),Sociological theories in progress: New formulations(pp. 58-72). New-bury Park, CA: Sage.

Hart, P. M. (1994). Teacher quality of work life: Integrating work experiences, psychologicaldistress and morale.Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology,67, 109-132.

Hoffman, E. (1985). The effect of race-ratio composition on the frequency of organizationalcommunication.Social Psychology Quarterly, 48, 17-26.

Hom, P. W., & Griffeth, R. W. (1995).Employee turnover. Cincinnati, OH: South-Western Col-lege Publishing.

Homans, G. (1950).The human group. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.Jackson, S. (1991). Team composition in organizational settings: Issues in managing an increas-

ingly diverse workforce. In S. Worchel, W. Wood, & J. Simpson (Eds.),Group process andproductivity(pp. 138-173). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.




Jacobs, J. (1989).Revolving doors: Sex segregation and women’s careers. Stanford, CA: Stan-ford University Press.

Kahn, R. L., Wolfe, D. M., Quinn, R. P., Snoek, J. D., & Rosenthal, R. A. (1964).Organizationalstress: Studies in role conflict and ambiguity. New York: John Wiley.

Kanter, R. M. (1977). Some effects of proportions on group life: Skewed sex ratios and responsesto token women.American Journal of Sociology, 82, 965-990.

Lawler, E. J. (1992). Affective attachments to nested groups: A choice-process theory.AmericanSociological Review, 57, 327-339.

Lieberson, S. (1980).A piece of the pie: Blacks and White immigrants since 1880. Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press.

Lincoln, J., & Kalleberg, A. L. (1990).Culture, control, and commitment: A study of work orga-nization and work attitudes in the United States and Japan. Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Lortie, D. C. (1975).School teacher: A sociological study. Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.

March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1976).Ambiguity and choice in organizations. Bergen, Norway:Universitetforlaget.

Messick, D., & Mackie, D. (1989). Intergroup relations.Annual Review of Psychology,40, 45-81.Meyer, J. P., & Allen, N. J. (1997).Commitment in the workplace. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Meyer, J. W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and

ceremony.American Journal of Sociology, 83, 340-363.Mueller, C. W., Wallace, J. E., & Price, J. L. (1992). Employee commitment: Resolving some is-

sues.Work and Occupations,19, 211-236.Murray, M. (1982).The middle years of life of middle class Black men. Unpublished manuscript,

Psychology Department, University of Cincinnati.National Center for Education Statistics. (1997).Teacher professionaliztion and teacher com-

mitment: A multilevel analysis. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.Neter, J., Kutner, M. H., Nachsheim, C. J., & Wasserman, W. (1996).Applied linear regression

models(3rd ed.). Chicago: Irwin.O’Reilly, C., Caldwell, D., & Barnett, W. (1989) . Work group demography, social integration,

and turnover.Administrative Science Quarterly 34, 21-37.Ostroff, C. (1992). The relationship between satisfaction, attitudes, and performance: An orga-

nizational analysis.Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 963-974.Pfeffer, J. (1983). Organizational demography. In L. L. Cummings & B. M. Staw (Eds.),Re-

search in organizational behavior(Vol. 5, pp. 299-357). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.Porter, L. W., Steers, R. M., Mowday, R. T., & Boulian, P. V. (1974). Organizational commit-

ment, job satisfaction, and turnover among psychiatric technicians.Journal of Applied Psy-chology, 59, 603-609.

Quillian, L. (1995). Prejudice as a response to perceived group threat: Population compositionand anti-immigrant and racial prejudice in Europe.American Sociological Review, 60,586-611.

Ridgeway, C., & Walker, H. (1995). Status structures. In K. Cook, G. Fine, & J. House (Eds.),So-ciological perspectives on social psychology(pp. 281-310). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Rosenholtz, S. (1987). Education reform strategies: Will they increase teacher commitment?American Journal of Education,95, 534-562.

Rosenholtz, S., & Simpson, C. (1990). Workplace conditions and the rise and fall of teachers’commitment.Sociology of Education,63, 241-257.




Rowan, B. (1990). Commitment and control: Alternative strategies for the organizational designof schools. In C. Cazden (Ed.),Review of research in education(pp. 353-389). Washington,DC: American Educational Research Association.

Spector, P. E. (1997).Job satisfaction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Staw, B. M., Bell, N., & Clausen, J. A. (1986). The dispositional approach to job attitudes: A life

time longitudinal test.Administrative Science Quarterly, 31, 56-77.Stephan, W. (1978). School desegregation: An evaluation of predictions made inBrown v. Board

of Education.Psychological Bulletin,85, 217-238.Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. (1986). Social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel &

W. Austin (Eds.),Psychology of intergroup relations(pp. 7-24). Chicago: Nelson-Hall.Tetrick, L. E., & LaRocco, J. M. (1987). Understanding, prediction, and control as moderators of

the relationships between perceived stress, satisfaction, and psychological well-being.Jour-nal of Applied Psychology, 72, 538-543.

Thomas, M., & Holmes, B. (1992). Determinants of satisfaction for Blacks and Whites.The So-ciological Quarterly, 33, 459-472.

Tomaskovic-Devey, D. (1993).Gender and race inequality at work. New York: ILR Press.Tsui, A., Egan, T., & O’Reilly, C. (1992). Being different: Relational demography and organiza-

tional attachment.Administrative Science Quarterly, 37, 549-579.Tsui, A., Egan, T., & Porter, L. (1994, August).Performance implications of relational demography

in vertical dyads. Paper presented at the National Meeting of the Academy of Management.Turner, J. (1985). Social categorization and the self-concept: A social cognitive theory of group

behavior. In E. Lawler (Ed.),Advances in group processes: Theory and research(Vol. 2,pp. 77-121). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

U.S. Department of Education. (1997).Teacher professionalization and teacher commitment: Amultilevel analysis. Washington, DC: Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

Wallace, J. E. (1995). Corporatist control and organizational commitment among professionals:The case of lawyers working in law firms.Social Forces,73, 811-839.

Watson, D., Pennebaker, J. W., & Folger, R. (1987). Beyond negative affectivity: Measuringstress and satisfaction in the workplace.Journal of Organizational Behavior Management,8, 141-157.

Wharton, A., & Baron, J. (1987). So happy together? The impact of gender segregation on men atwork. American Sociological Review, 52, 574-587.

Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems.Administrative Sci-ence Quarterly, 21, 1-19.

Williams, L., Gavin, M., & Williams, M. (1996). Measurement and nonmeasurement processeswith negative affectivity and employee attitudes.Journal of Applied Psychology,81, 88-101.




the effects of group racial composition on job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and career...

Documents