ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the moderating roles of similarity preference and respect in the relationship between racioethnic diversity and conflict. It aims at studying how the certain individual attitudes create tension among members of a workgroup characterized by specific type(s) of diversity. The chapter focuses on national diversity as an important diversity type in multinational workgroups. It demonstrates that the presence of members with nationalistic attitudes in nationally diverse workgroups will strengthen the positive relationship between national diversity and relationship and task conflicts and will weaken the national diversity to task conflict relationship. The chapter hypothesizes that outgroup derogation was a stronger moderator of the relationship between national diversity and conflict compared to national preference. It also demonstrates that when members perceive national diversity in their workgroup they will likely experience more process conflict than the members of a workgroup perceiving low national diversity. The chapter utilizes the Bogardus Distance scale to measure social distances towards the nationalities.
