Abstract
Teaming across expertise boundaries, within and across organizations, is an increasingly popular strategy for innovation. Although membership diversity expands the range of perspectives that teams can draw upon to innovate, meta-analyses of the team-diversity literature have found weak or inconsistent support for that assumption. These studies also have typically examined effects of team diversity in relatively stable bounded teams, rather than in newly formed temporary groups. Drawing from two streams of research to unpack team diversity, this paper seeks to describe the complexity of cross-boundary teaming, while highlighting factors that may be central to its effectiveness. Past research on team diversity suggests numerous moderators that affect the diversity–performance relationship in teams, while research on knowledge and practice explores the situated activities and logics of diverse experts in great depth. Both streams thus shed light on team diversity, offering complementary insights. We develop a model of cross-boundary teaming that marries these streams and offers human resource management researchers and professionals insights and approaches for helping diverse teams tackle complex problems.
Highlights
In a growing number of cases, teams span organizational boundaries, not just functional ones, to pursue innovation
Individuals from several multinational corporations, local government agencies, and startups formed a consortium to develop a run-down Paris suburb into an ecologically and technologically “smart” neighborhood (Edmondson et al, 2016). In each of these cases of innovation, individual participants had to work across knowledge boundaries – boundaries associated with differences in expertise and organization in novel settings
We focus on the effects of deep-level attributes on teaming, which we term “knowledge diversity.”
Summary
In a growing number of cases, teams span organizational boundaries, not just functional ones, to pursue innovation. Individuals from several multinational corporations, local government agencies, and startups formed a consortium to develop a run-down Paris suburb into an ecologically and technologically “smart” neighborhood (Edmondson et al, 2016) In each of these cases of innovation, individual participants had to work across knowledge boundaries – boundaries associated with differences in expertise and organization in novel settings. They had joined a newly formed temporary group, with fluid membership, which needed to develop rapidly into a high-performing unit to take on an unfamiliar project. We draw from research on team effectiveness and knowledge in organizations to build theory about how strangers with diverse expertise and organizational affiliation can team up in flexible and temporary forms to pursue innovation
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