Political context and immigrants' work-related performance errors: Insights from the National Basketball Association

PLoS One. 2023 Nov 1;18(11):e0289019. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289019. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

In numerous countries, both international migration and regional support for far-right political parties are on the rise. This is important considering that a frequent aim of far-right political parties is to aggressively limit the inflow of immigrants. Understanding how regional far-right political support affects the immigrants working in these regions is therefore vital for executives and organizations as a whole. Integrating political science research at the macro-level with stereotype threat theory at the individual level, we argue that regional far-right political support makes negative immigrant stereotypes salient, increasing the number of work-related performance errors conducted by immigrants while reducing those by natives. Using objective field data from a professional sports context, we demonstrate how subordinates' immigrant status interacts with the political context in which they reside to predict their frequency of performance errors.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Basketball*
  • Emigrants and Immigrants*
  • Emigration and Immigration
  • Humans
  • Organizations
  • Politics

Grants and funding

The authors (BAK & FK) acknowledge funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG – German Research Foundation: [https://www.dfg.de] under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC-2035/1 – 390681379. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.