Teaming Up or Down? A Multisource Study on the Role of Team Identification and Learning in the Team Diversity–Performance Link
研究了人口统计多样性(性别和国籍)在何种条件下促进团队绩效,发现团队认同强时多样性通过团队学习和效能提升绩效,且客观多样性指标比主观指标更有效。
Prior literature paints an incoherent picture on the relationship between team diversity and performance. The current article investigates circumstances under which demographic diversity (gender and nationality) facilitates performance. Based on the categorization–elaboration model, we build a theoretical framework to demonstrate the crucial role of team learning and efficacy as mediators, and team identification as a moderator to understand how and when demographic diversity facilitates team performance. In a cross-sectional study among 72 project teams, data were collected from multiple sources (self-reports, database, and performance assessments) to obtain objective and subjective indices of team diversity and performance. Results from a multigroup structural equation model showed that team diversity facilitated performance for teams with a strong, but not a weak, collective team identity. Second, team diversity facilitated performance through increased team learning and team efficacy only for teams with a strong team identity. Finally, multisource data revealed a different pattern of results for objective and subjective measures. The objective diversity index seemed a more powerful predictor of performance compared with the subjective index, particularly for strongly identifying teams. These findings provide valuable insight for increasingly diversifying organizations, on the circumstances under which team diversity’s potential flourishes. Moreover, it underlines the importance of data triangulation as objective and subjective measures of diversity are conceptually different and show incoherent empirical findings in the diversity–performance link across extant literature.