In this study, we seek to understand the consequences of demographic faultlines at the organizational level. Drawing from the faultline and cross-categorization literature, we suggest that organizational demographic faultlines (based on age and gender) have the potential to either reduce or enhance employees’ collective organizational identification and, thereby, indirectly influence firm performance and innovation. Whether organizational demographic faultlines have detrimental or beneficial effects depends on the functional heterogeneity within faultline-based demographic subgroups, where heterogeneity is defined as the extent to which subgroup members belong to different functional departments. We theorize that this functional heterogeneity alters the degree of social integration between demographic subgroups. Results from a multisource field study of demographic faultlines among 5,495 employees in 82 small and medium-sized firms (<250 employees) support our model. We demonstrate that organizational demographic faultlines have important consequences, and we show that functional heterogeneity changes whether these consequences are negative or positive.

中文翻译：

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组织人口统计缺陷线：它们对集体组织认同、企业绩效和企业创新的影响

在这项研究中，我们试图了解组织层面人口断层线的后果。从断层线和跨分类文献中，我们认为组织人口统计断层线（基于年龄和性别）有可能减少或增强员工的集体组织认同，从而间接影响公司绩效和创新。组织人口断层线是否具有不利或有益影响取决于基于断层线的人口统计亚组内的功能异质性，其中异质性定义为亚组成员属于不同职能部门的程度。我们的理论是，这种功能异质性改变了人口亚群之间的社会整合程度。对 82 家中小型公司（<250 名员工）的 5,495 名员工进行的人口统计断层线多源实地研究的结果支持我们的模型。我们证明了组织人口断层线具有重要的后果，并且我们表明，无论这些后果是消极的还是积极的，功能异质性都会发生变化。