"Factional Faultlines, Perceived Subgroups, and Cascading Faultlines in Alliance Teams"

Abstract

The benefits of working in alliance teams (teams consisting of representatives of different organizations) are high, however too often these groups are not successful due to their factional faultlines - alignments of multiple diversity attributes between representatives of different organizations. In an experimental study of alliance teams, the authors examined the effect of perceived subgroups and whether the team faultlines in the organizational team (team from which team members are sent as representatives) affects the extent to which factional faultlines in the alliance team (team to which representatives are sent) affect alliance team outcomes. We introduce the notion of cascading faultlines to explain how the faultlines of the respective organizational teams may disrupt group processes and outcomes in the alliance team. In an experimental 2x2 design, factional faultlines in the alliance team and the faultlines in organizational teams were manipulated. As expected, factional faultlines in alliance teams directly affected subgroup perceptions and team outcomes in alliance teams. Alliance teams performed better when subgroups were not perceived, especially when they were facing strong factional faultlines as opposed to weak factional faultlines.