Patterns of Diversity: An Examination of Trait Diversity, Team Behavior, Conflict and Performance

Abstract

Team diversity creates a tension between knowledge exchange that benefits performance and identity threat which generates conflict. Modeling such processes is important for teams that need to overcome conflict and make high quality decisions. We draw on personality theory, the informational diversity-cognitive resource perspective and models of social identity to examine the relationships between team-level trait diversity, team behaviors, conflict and performance. Participants were 103 healthcare practitioners and 173 research laboratory participants who engaged in 68 team simulations of a 30- minute decision-making scenario set in a healthcare context. Participants completed surveys on personality before the simulation, and on conflict afterwards. Team interactions were transcribed and coded to assess behaviors, and experts rated team performance. Data showed there were no direct positive associations between trait variation and performance. However, variation in extraversion and agreeableness reduced interpersonal conflict while variation in neuroticism, openness and conscientiousness increased conflict. The relationship between agreeableness and performance was moderated by opinion seeking and mediated by interpersonal conflict. The indirect relationship between variation in conscientiousness and performance was moderated by disagreements and antagonism. We suggest that team diversity is a patterned phenomenon whereby difference is tempered by similarity, and which has several forms of relationship with performance.