Threatened identities and polarized groups: How intergroup leadership can heal divided societies

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Rast III, David

• SSHRC IG awarded 2023: Societal and organizational success often hinges on whether subgroups or departments can successfully work together. These subgroups or departments can have positive, harmonious relations whether they feel connected with the larger, superordinate group that lends itself to cooperation, cohesion, and purpose. But these subgroups sometimes have destructively competitive, even hostile and violent, relations with one another and an associated sense of distrust or identity threat. This leads to people feeling alienated and socially distant from the superordinate identity as the superordinate group is fractured by subgroup conflict, which weakens the superordinate group's cohesion, common purpose and shared worldview, and its members' sense of security. The question we address in this project is how the latter can be transformed into the former. We focus specifically on the leadership challenged presented by fractured groups and communities.

• Date created

  2022-10-26

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Insight Grant
  • IG
  • SSHRC
  • Leadership
  • Social Identity
  • Group Process
  • Intergroup Relations
  • Psychology
  • Social Psychology
  • Organizational Behaviour
  • Organizational Psychology
  • Politics and Government
  • Management
  • Multiculturalism and Ethnic Studies

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-h34x-cc05

• License

  ©️Rast III, David. All rights reserved other than by permission. This document embargoed to those without UAlberta CCID until 2030.