The out-group status of ethnic minority employees probably has negative consequences
for socialization on the job. Language difficulties, discrimination, and cultural differences
may hinder communication processes and can result in lower satisfaction and commitment
among ethnic minority employees. It may also in general be true that learning is harder for
ethnic minority employees, because it involves (implicit) knowledge about norms and
values from an unfamiliar culture. That is, socialization of immigrants may be hindered by
their lack or misunderstanding of cultural information. In general, because ethnic minority
employees have to face problems that ethnic majority employees do not, researchers expect
them to report less positive job attitudes than employees who belong to the majority group
(De Vries & Pettigrew, 1998; Morrison & Von Glinow, 1990). Therefore, we expect ethnic
minority employees to report less content-related communication (both work-related and
person-related communication) and less positive job attitudes than ethnic majority
employees. Consequently, our first hypothesis is: