Turner College's Mark James Investigates Importance of Community in Relocation Decisions of Marginalized Individuals

A new study by Turner College management professor Mark James and Zhimin Hu, a Research Fellow in the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology at the University of Padua, asserts that recognizing the importance of community for marginalized or stigmatized individuals enables human resources professionals and researchers to understand how nonpecuniary factors affect relocation decisions. To enhance this understanding, James and Hu examine the link between community and work for gays and lesbians, specifically, the psychological and demographic factors influencing individuals’ perceptions of the importance of a gay and lesbian community when considering a job in a new city. In doing so they employ an urban geography perspective to analyze the experiences of immigrants moving to the United States. 

According to the academic literature, urban geography examines how spatial relationships and social interactions influence urban spaces. According to this approach, cities are dynamic systems where people gather for economic opportunities, social connections, and community support. Across U.S. history, immigrants came to the country to escape repression and poverty, and to seek social and economic opportunities. As the authors explain, throughout this history marginalized and often stigmatized immigrants settled in urban centers, adding that many gays and lesbians moved to urban areas leading to the development of gay community space. Escaping personal and social exclusion, gays and lesbians established themselves in urban neighborhoods, particularly along the East and West coasts, where they could find identity affirmation, belonging, and safety. As they add, these spaces were critical for building community, enabling identity formation, and fostering self-expression.

James and Hu use Social Identity Theory (SIT) to examine the relationship between disclosing one’s sexual orientation and the significance of having a gay and lesbian community when considering job opportunities in a new city. According to SIT, affiliations with groups based on ethnicity, nationality, social class, political views, and sexual orientation are core components of personal identity. These affiliations, as James and Hu explain, provide individuals with a sense of belonging and an understanding of who they are and their role in society. People hold multiple social identities that shift depending on context, time, and circumstances; they present different facets of themselves in different settings.

The study by James and Hu, which appears in the Journal of Business, Industry and Economics, develops a series of testable hypotheses related to the discussions above. First, being open about one’s sexual orientation, especially in a new city, can introduce stress, prompting individuals to seek a supportive gay or lesbian community. Therefore, they propose that there is a positive relationship between self-disclosed sexual orientation and the importance of a gay and lesbian community when considering a job in a new city. Next, they also propose that gays and lesbians employing impression management strategies, a concept in social psychology that refers to the conscious or subconscious efforts individuals make to strategically shape how others perceive them, are more likely to value a gay and lesbian community when considering a job in a new city. James and Hu also propose that gays and lesbians with a strong internal locus of control, which is a psychological trait describing a person’s belief that one influences the events and outcomes in one's life, are less likely to prioritize a gay and lesbian community when considering employment in a new city.

James and Hu surveyed 262 members of gay and lesbian organizations in various Midwestern cities in the United States. To construct the dependent variable, they gauged gay and lesbian community importance when job seeking was using three questions and a 7-point Likert scale, with 1 being “strongly disagree” to 7 being “strongly agree.” Higher values indicate the respondent feels a gay or lesbian community would be an important consideration when seeking a job in a new location. Independent variables, measured similarly, include sexual orientation disclosure at work, impression management, workplace internal locus of control, and neuroticism. Additional independent variables used include education, age, gender and whether the individual currently has a significant other. Factor analysis employed by James and Hu supports the three hypotheses discussed above at the 91% level of confidence or better. James and Hu conclude that both identity and community play critical roles in attracting and retaining talented employees.