Abstract

This research project, titled The expression of organizational dissent among Sub-Saharan African student migrants, was conducted by Délwendé Bouda, a student in the Department of Communication Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato as a requirement for completing a Master of Arts degree in July 2015. The purpose of this quantitative study was to investigate how Sub-Saharan African immigrants express dissent in an organizational setting in the United States. Three hypotheses were established for this study, and online surveys were conducted through Qualtrics. Three different scales were used to measure the following variables: organizational dissent (articulated, displaced, and latent), belief in hierarchy, and perception white racial superiority. Overall, 72 respondents completed the survey but 65 responses were eventually considered for the data analysis. The results showed that while there was a significant positive relationship between displaced dissent and belief in hierarchy there is no significant relationship between articulated dissent or latent dissent and belief in hierarchy. In addition, perception of white racial superiority did not have a significant relationship with the types of dissent used by Sub-Saharan African migrants. The results also showed that Sub-Saharan African immigrants had a greater tendency to express articulated dissent as opposed to latent and displaced dissent. The implications of these findings--especially the tendency to express articulated dissent and the positive relationship between displaced dissent and belief in hierarchy--could be linked to cross-cultural adaptation theory (Kim, 2001) and acculturation (Berry, 1980). Both theoretical frameworks suggest that migrants seek to adapt to their new environments while trying to maintain some aspects of their cultures of origin.

Advisor

Deepa Oommen

Committee Member

Christopher Brown

Committee Member

Lee Tesdell

Date of Degree

2015

Language

english

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Arts (MA)

College

Arts and Humanities

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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