National diversity and team performance: the moderating role of interactional justice climate

Abstract

In this team-level study, we present and test a model in which two aspects of interactional justice climate, its level and its strength, interact to moderate the effects of national diversity on team performance. Connecting the literatures on team diversity and (interactional) justice climate, we hypothesize that a high level of interactional justice exhibited by the line manager promotes the performance of nationally diverse teams, but only when team members share this perception (i.e. when the climate is strong). Using time-lagged performance measurement, we conducted a multisource field study using data from 272 employees clustered in 45 teams who worked for a local subsidiary of a multinational enterprise. The findings confirm our hypothesis and have implications for the diversity and justice literatures, while advancing knowledge that promotes the effective management of increasingly diverse workforces in this era of globalization.