Abstract
Over the last few decades, several studies have been conducted to examine the complex relationships between team diversity and individual and organizational outcomes. Although, in theory, team diversity can foster positive organizational synergies by increasing the variance of perspectives and approaches to work different members can bring, the same idiosyncratic characteristics can also engender significant difficulties resulting from problems in coordination, communication and conflict. This study used a sample of 44 work groups to examine the influence of five types of diversity on team outcomes and the mediating role of task and relational conflict on this relationship. A survey of 279 team members and interviews with the 44 team managers were used to examine these relationships. Findings suggest that different forms of diversity impact task conflict in different ways, which in turn is negatively associated with job satisfaction and team performance. Results further show that diversity is unrelated to relational conflict; however, this type of conflict seems to hinder both job satisfaction and team performance. Overall, these patterns suggest a complex link between team diversity and how work groups function.
Highlights
During the last few decades, organizations have embraced new structural forms in order to reduce costs while maximizing flexibility and responsiveness to customer demands
Our research model proposes that work group diversity indirectly affects team performance and members’ satisfaction through two types of conflict: task conflict and relational conflict
We found that some forms of diversity were related to task conflict and task conflict was related to job satisfaction and team perceived performance, a third condition was not met in verifying a mediating effect: a significant relationship between diversity and team outcomes without conflict included in the equation
Summary
During the last few decades, organizations have embraced new structural forms in order to reduce costs while maximizing flexibility and responsiveness to customer demands. One of the underlying assumptions of these new structural forms is that groups can gather together the diversity of perspectives, expertise, and experiences necessary to produce effective organizational outcomes (Levine, Resnick, & Higgins, 1993) This theoretical perspective is known in team literature as the cognitive diversity hypothesis (Cox & Blake, 1991), and contends that the different cognitive attributes that members bring to the team can foster creativity, innovation and problem solving, and results in superior performance. Diversity is often portrayed as a ‘double edged sword’ by organizational researchers Some theoretical perspectives, such as the attraction-selection theory or the social identity theory, postulate that people prefer similarity in their interaction, suggesting that member heterogeneity has an adverse impact on team outcomes (Byrne, 1971). These theoretical perspectives suggest that homogenous groups can outperform heterogeneous teams due to higher cohesion within the group
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