91丝瓜视频

Ray Reagans

MIT

Zooming Out to See the Potential and Brewer-Schelling in to Realize it:
How Firms Can Sustain Racial Integration

Date: Friday, April 24, 2026
Time:10:30 AM -12:00 PM
Location: Virtual (ZOOM)

All are cordially invited to attend.

Abstract:

We examine the role of organizations in producing stable racial integration. Motivated by Schelling鈥檚 model of racial segregation, we consider how individual preferences for interracial contact (i.e., thresholds) contribute to segregation outcomes. These preferences are insufficient to account for a set of stylized facts that motivate our analysis, illustrated in the table below. The same individual can be found across roles in the table, yet these settings are characterized by different levels of segregation鈥攚hat people accept in one context may differ from what they accept in another. Preferences are therefore necessary but insufficient because their expression depends on features of the organizational context that can trigger or suppress the desire to act on them.

While Schelling emphasized the relative size of an individual鈥檚 in-group as a baseline against which preferences are evaluated, we argue that relative in-group size contributes to a broader validation ecology, with the linear relationship implied by Schelling as a special case. An individual鈥檚 threshold can be understood as the amount of validation required to remain in a setting, with validation provided by the presence of in-group members. In-group members are both sources of legitimacy and competition: legitimacy increases validation, while competition reduces it. The validation associated with legitimacy increases with in-group size at a decreasing rate, whereas the loss of validation associated with competition increases at an increasing rate. These dynamics produce two ideal-typical ecologies: one in which the legitimacy value of in-group members always exceeds the competitive pressures they introduce (a diminishing-rate ecology), and another in which legitimacy dominates initially but is eventually overtaken by competition (a tipping-point ecology).

We show how the same threshold can produce different outcomes depending on the ecology. These ecologies vary across organizational forms: those on the left are more likely to reflect diminishing-rate dynamics, while those on the right are more likely to exhibit tipping-point dynamics.

At the same time, the same ecology can produce different outcomes depending on features that can be managed within organizational forms. This perspective introduces an explicit role for managers. Organizational climate and narratives shape norms about appropriate levels of group representation and influence the weight individuals assign to their validation thresholds. Through these mechanisms, organizations do not merely aggregate preferences鈥攖hey shape how preferences are expressed and, in doing so, influence the stability of racial integration.