L4: Team Diversity and Composition Flashcards
Informational diversity
Differences in knowledge bases and perspectives that members bring to the group. Also known as functional or knowledge diversity. Can improve group performance by stimulating the elaboration of task-relevant info and perspectives
Group information elaboration
Exchange of info and perspectives, individual-level processing of info and perspectives. The deeper this is, to greater the performance
When can diverse perspectives reduce info diversity?
When it converges with other diversity dimensions like gender, personality differences or attitudes and values. The covariation of these differences result in a diversity faultline, resulting in an us-them distinction
Diversity beliefs
Beliefs about the value of diversity to work group functioning. This affects to extent to which workgroups are perceived as a good group (which refers to expectations of tasks). Pro-diversity beliefs could remove a barrier to benefit from info diversity
Hypotheses
- diversity beliefs moderate the effect of info diversity on group performance
- diversity beliefs moderate the effect of info diversity on elaboration of task-relevant info
- the effect of diversity beliefs on performance in info diverse groups is mediate by elaboration of task-relevant info
What was the method?
To test these hypotheses, the authors conducted an experimental study with 184 university students from UvA, with an equal number of males and females. A faultline was created through gender, bogus personality feedback, and seating. Individuals were assigned to a 4-person gender-diverse team (2 females, 2 males) and randomly assigned to conditions manipulating informational diversity (same information vs. different information) and diversity beliefs (pro-diversity vs. pro-similarity). Teams worked on a complex decision-making task (items needed to survive in a desert). Performance was measured by calculating the mean score per item chosen for each group, focusing on quality over quantity.
What were the results found?
The results revealed that diversity beliefs moderated the relationship between informational diversity and performance, as well as the relationship between informational diversity and information elaboration. The influence of diversity beliefs on performance was fully mediated by information elaboration. These findings can be used to improve management of a diverse workforce by emphasising the importance of diversity beliefs rather than similarity beliefs. In addition, these findings can be used to improve diversity training programs.
What is diversity?
can be conceptualized as a characteristic of a social grouping (i.e., a team, organization, or society) that reflects the degree to which there are objective or subjective differences
among people within the group. These differences can indicate either separation (i.e., diverging positions, opinions, or values), variety (i.e., heterogeneity with respect to task-relevant categories that the group members belong to), or disparity (i.e., an unequal distribution of valued resources)
What is the role of transformational leadership?
- fosters elaboration and in-depth processing of task-relevant info
- through this elaboration there are the positive effects of diversity on team performance
- also enhance collective team identification
- this is acting as role models, providing inspirational motivation and intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration
- info diversity is related to team creativity when transformational leadership was high
What are the hypotheses?
Transformational leadership moderates the relationship of age, nationality and educational diversity with team performance
The elaboration of task-relevant info mediates the moderating effect of transformational leadership on its relationship of diversity with team performance
Collective team identification partially mediates the moderating effect of transformational leadership
How does transformation leadership foster the exchange and elaboration of task-relevant info in diverse teams?
- promotes the internalization of goals and values towards collective causes
- establishes superordinate social identity based on the common vision-> collective team identification
- fosters collective enthusiasm, optimism and efficacy through stimulating motivation
- act as buffers against performance-inhibiting levels of stress
Collective team identification
emotional component of social identification that has been shown to most adequately capture the motivational force that induces individuals to engage in interactions with others
How does transformational leadership ensure collective team identification?
- charisma and inspirational motivation promote unity in diversity, considerate and intellectually stimulating behaviour
- intellectual stimulation is developing new ideas, individual consideration is ensuring everyone feels heard and valued
Method
- looked at teams in a pharmaceutical company, team leaders provided team performance and team members provided data on all other variables
- all the variables were measured using questionnaires except for team performance
What did the results find?
When transformational leadership was high, both nationality and educational diversity were positively related to team performance, while these relationships were nonsignificant when leadership was low. In contrast, age diversity did not significantly affect performance under high transformational leadership, but it was negatively associated with performance when leadership was low. Furthermore, the study found that the elaboration of task-relevant information fully mediated the interactive effects of age, nationality, and educational diversity on team performance. Additionally, collective team identification fully mediated the interaction between age diversity and transformational leadership and partially mediated the interaction between educational diversity and transformational leadership on the elaboration of task-relevant information.
Practical implications of this study?
Organizations should use transformational leadership to unlock the potential of diverse teams, as diversity alone does not guarantee better performance. Appointing or training transformational leaders is especially crucial in diverse teams.
This leadership style enhances performance by facilitating information sharing and reducing social categorization. Organizations can further support diverse teams by fostering trust, shared goals, and team-based incentives, which may complement or substitute transformational leadership, especially in flatter hierarchies.
Diversity
Differences between individuals on any attribute that may lead to perception that another person is different from the self. Can include: social category diversity (differences in detectable attributes like sex, age, ethnicity and informational/functional diversity which are differences in less visible underlying attributes more job-related
The information/decision-making perspective
Argues that diverse groups should outperform homogenous ones as there is a broader range of task-relevant knowledge, skills and abilities
Social categorization perspective
Diversity negatively affects relationships within the group while contributing to group performance
Categorization-elaboration model
- Diversity within a group is positively related to the elaboration of task-relevant info and perspectives
- Elaboration is related to group performance
- This can occur when task has strong-info processing and decision-making components, when the group is highly motivated and when members are high in task ability
- social categorization depends on: cognitive accessibility (SC implied by differences is cognitively activated), normative fit is the extent to which categorization makes subjective sense to group members and comparative fit is the extent to which categorization yields subgroups with high intragroup similarity and intergroup differences
What are the main problems with the diversity literature?
The processes underlying the effect of diversity on performance is measured by conflict and dissent (can disrupt or improve performance by depends on how they are managed)
The nature of performance that benefits from diversity is ill-defined. The relationship with diversity and elaboration should be focussed on, which can lead to more performance
Elaboration
is defined as the exchange of information and perspectives, individual-level processing of the information and perspectives, the process of feeding back the results of this individual-level processing into the group, and discussion and integration of its implications. This can lead to more thorough and creative info processing, creative and innovative idea generation and problem-solving and high quality decision-making
Propositions of this research
- The primary process underlying the positive effects of diversity on group performance is elaboration of
task-relevant information. - task requirements (more creativity etc) can moderate the relationship between diversity and performance
- diversity can engender elaboration when group member task motivation is higher
- diversity can engender elaboration when group member task ability is high
- social categorization within work groups is contingent on the interaction of comparative fit, normative fit and cognitive accessibility
- social categorization results in intergroup biases that are disruptive to group functioning
- Intergroup biases elicited by work-group diversity are disruptive to elaboration of task-relevant information and group performance.
- All dimensions of diversity may elicit social categorization processes as well as elaboration processes.
What could moderate the relationship between diversity and elaboration?
- task complexity as info diversity was positively related to performance in this case
- motivation and ability (accountability could influence performance)
What has research found regarding these propositions?
Diversity research has been inconsistent, partly because the role of elaboration (sharing and integrating diverse perspectives) has been overlooked. Future studies should focus on measuring elaboration through behavioral observations or surveys. Future research should explore how leadership, goal-setting, and organizational justice influence motivation in diverse teams. Ability (e.g., intelligence, education, communication skills) helps teams process diversity effectively. However, constraints like time pressure and environmental noise can reduce these benefits. Diversity follows an inverted U-shape relationship with performance—moderate diversity enhances performance, but excessive diversity may cause misunderstandings and inefficiencies.
What has research found about social categorization?
Most research implicitly assume that social categorization is a function of the degree of difference between group members, results in intergroup biases (less positive reactions to dissimilar others). Measures have only used a measure that reflects the degree of similarity rather than manipulating group composition
When is social categorization salient?
Diversity can lead to us-versus-them distinctions, but not all differences trigger social categorization. Salience depends on comparative fit (how well it reflects real differences), normative fit (whether it aligns with beliefs and stereotypes), and cognitive accessibility (how easily it comes to mind). Comparative fit increases when differences within a category are small, but between-category differences are large. Normative fit depends on whether differences are seen as meaningful in a given context. Cognitive accessibility is influenced by prior experiences and contextual cues.
All of these interact to determine if diversity leads to social categorization, meaning differences alone do not always cause division.
What is the relationship between social categorization and intergroup bias?
Intergroup bias is ore favourable perceptions of and attitudes and behaviour towards in groups than outgroups, while social categorization is the perceptual grouping of people. Intergroup biases can negatively influence affective-evaluative reactions to diverse groups-> low interpersonal liking and group cohesion, relational conflict, low identification with and commitment to group. Little research has distinguished between these. Intergroup biases can be inspired by threats to the value and distinctiveness of the group identity such as through status competition, discrimination, or the suppression of subgroup differences.
How to reduce intergroup biases?
Intergroup biases are lower when subgroups had distinct roles and equal status but had more inclusive perceptual representations of the group. Can be a risk with suppressing categorizations-> stronger biases
How could biases impact work performance?
Intergroup biases can disrupt elaboration of communication. There is more trust in in-group members than out-group members and see as more valid sources of info. So intergroup biases due to diversity can limit the potential of elaboration of task-relevant info
How can different aspects of diversity influence performance?
Some dimensions of diversity are task-relevant such as educational background, but other differences may play a role that seem less task relevant-> social category differences can result in task-relevant differences (linked to info differences). Info differences can also result in social category differences
How should future research take this into account?
It suggests that any dimension of diversity can trigger both categorization and elaboration processes, influencing performance. Diversity research should focus on context-specific contingencies of these processes, rather than relying on categories. Over time, the function of diversity may change, with diverse groups initially performing worse but improving as group tenure allows for shared knowledge and reduced categorization. While tenure may shift processes from categorization to elaboration, it could also reveal new differences, causing disruptions. Research should explore the impact of personality, attitudes, and values diversity on both processes
What are the implications for diversity management?
This model suggests that to collect benefits of work-group diversity and to prevent disruptive effects, diversity management should improve elaboration, prevent intergroup biases. CEM argues that diversity management should focus on task motivation, task ability and task requirements. Such as through selection and work-group composition. Management should focus on the contingencies of biases, and preventing comparative fit. Also fostering pro-diversity beliefs and attitudes and that all dimensions of diversity can stimulate performance through elaboration or hinder it.
Team
A collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks who share responsibility for outcomes who see themselves and are seen by others as an intact social entity in social systems
What are the types of teams?
- work teams are continuing work units responsible for producing goods or providing services
- parallel teams are parallel to an organization, perform functions that the regular organization is not equipped to perform well
- project teams are time-limited teams that work at one-time outputs
- management teams coordinate and provide direction to sub-units and responsible for the performance of these
Team processes
Are members’ interdependent acts that convert inputs to outcomes through cognitive, verbal and behavioural activities directed toward organizing taskwork to achieve collective goals. Involve members who are interacting with other members or with their environment, and these processes are used to direct, align, and monitor taskwork. Examples are: information-sharing, problem-solving, and conflict management.
Emergent states
Properties of the team that are dynamic and vary as a function of team context, inputs, processes and outcomes. They are products of team experience. Examples are cohesion, trust and team climate. They are both outputs and inputs
Mediators
In-between variables which explain why a certain input variable has an effect on certain outcome variables.
Diversity
differences among team members, and can be defined as a characteristic of a social grouping that reflects the degree to which objective or subjective differences exist between group
members
What are the different perspectives to diversity?
Info-processing argues that diversity is associated with an increase in available resources as they differ in resources, background, knowledge, insights.
Social categorization: those similar to the self are ingroup and others are outgroups, resulting in subgroups. There can be less trust, cooperation which leads to ineffective group processes
What are the 3 types of diversity?
- separation is differences among members in position or opinion, which reflect disagreement or opposition on values, beliefs or attitudes-> maximal when there are two opposing factions at each end
- variety is differences in kind or category in info, knowledge or expertise-> maximal when differ from one another
- disparity is the differences among members along a continuum of social assets like power, pay and status
What else can mediate the effects of diversity?
Conflict which is the process resulting from tensions btw team members due to real or perceived differences. Task conflicts are disagreements on the distribution of resources, procedures and policies. Relationship conflicts are disagreements about personal taste, political preferences, values and interpersonal style. Relationship conflict might become more emotional-> interferes with work. But task conflict can benefit performance. But research disconfirmed this-> both conflicts undermine performance and are associated with one another
How does separation fit with the social categorization perspective?
Minimum separation on attributes such as opinions, values, and beliefs
will be psychologically comforting and will lead to mutual liking among team members, low levels of conflict, and positive interactions. Maximum separation might, on the other hand, lead to conflicts among opposing factions, decreases in liking. Separation can stem from social category diversity or info diversity
How does variety fit with an info processing approach?
With minimum levels of variety, team members are redundant and have no benefits of working as a team can be expected. With maximum variety then each team member can provide unique knowledge or insights-> higher team potential
What is disparity linked with?
Inequality in economic or sociological sense, which has different effects depending on the level of disparity, and factors like legitimacy of inequality. It may lead to competition for scarce resources and power struggles. Can lead to conformity, silence, suppression of deviance and withdrawal
What do the effects of disparity depend on?
team climate, as the presence of a high-status group member leads to conformity only in a team climate which members are afraid to speak their mind. Or the effects of diversity depend on leadership.
Diversity could lead to better performance when team members’ inputs are indispensable given the team task. Group members should be aware of their own and others resources to perform well.
What are mental models?
Mental models refer to organized knowledge structures that allow people to interact with their environment. For teams: organized knowledge structures that allow team members to interact with each other and perform the team’s task. But to coordinate team activities, important to predict what teammates are going to do.
What are different types of knowledge?
Task knowledge is knowledge about equipment, tech, task procedures and strategies. Team knowledge is knowledge about team interaction and the team itself. They can be identical or vary in the mental models they have.
How has research assessed this?
Participants were assessed their performance on six tasks in a jungle combat circuit after completing an assessment of their team mental models, measuring accuracy (compared to expert models) and similarity (consistency among team members). Accuracy and similarity of team mental models were positively related to team performance. Research has also found that team mental models develop through team interaction. General mental ability predicts the accuracy of team mental models-> superior performance
How can team models be developed?
Through cross-training which is an instructional strategy in which each team member is trained in the duties of his or her teammates. This enhances the knowledge of others roles and responsibilities→ improves coordination. There is personal clarification (verbally presenting team members with information about teammates’ jobs), positional modeling (observing the behaviors of other team members performing their jobs) and positional rotation (performing the teammate’s job oneself ).
How effective is cross training?
Performed better, improved team coordination and positional modelling and rotation found to be slightly more effective than positional clarification.
What is a mediator?
A variable that explains the relationship between two variables
What is a moderator?
A variable that impacts the strength or direction of the relationship between two variables
What are the key developments showing the importance of understanding team diversity?
- organizations are working more using teams, which are becoming more diverse→ diversity becoming more important
- but, there is growing backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion (so not able to use diversity quotas after trump’s election)
What are diversity typologies?
- demographic vs informational diversity
- more vs less job-related
- deep-level (education, religion) vs surface level (age, race, gender)
How is diversity a double-edged sword?
value-in-diversity hypothesis argues that diversity improves performance as there is a larger information pool. other hypothesis is that diversity impedes performance due to greater conflict
What is diversity?
Differences between individuals on any attribute that may lead to the perception that another is different from the self. Textbook defines it as the degree to which objective or subjective differences exist between group members
What is the optimistic view of diversity?
Info-processing: diverse teams have more relevant info and more perspectives than homogenous groups. When teams combine these resources, they can achieve superior performance.
What is the pessimistic view of diversity?
Social categorization is that diversity creates social divisions which harm teamwork, related to similarity-attraction theory (people attracted to similar others). The self-categorization/social identity is the part of identity rooted in group memberships. So people categorize themselves and others into groups, which they identify with and promote
When do diverse teams perform better/worse than similar teams?
It depends on moderators, as the direct effects of diversity on team processes + outcome are inconclusive
What is the categorization elaboration model?
Combines info elaboration with sub-group categorization and intergroup bias. Includes characteristics like sub-group categorization, which leads to intergroup bias, so reduced info elaboration and performance. Characteristics of the context such as task complexity, motivation, ability, and cooperation and interdependence, which have positive effects. Lastly there are characteristics of the individuals
What can influence faultlines?
Divides a group into subgroups based on certain dimensions of diversity, which becomes stronger with category salience and comparative fit (similarities within one sub-group compared to differences in another). Can bridge these differences by using cross-categorization and superordinate identity to connect groups on a higher level
What is transformational leadership?
- idealized influence is being a positive role model for followers→ walking the talk
- inspirational motivation is the ability to inspire and motivate subordinates
- individualized consideration is the genuine care for the needs and feelings of subordinates
- intellectual stimulation is challenging subordinates to become their best and most creative selves
Characteristics of visionary leaders?
Includes: idealized influence, charisma, inspirational motivation. With high leader categorization and high visionary leader behaviours, results in lower team communication adequacy which fully mediates the relationship of diversity on team performance
Can not believing in the power of diversity make people see more categories?
Yes, as negative diversity beliefs was related to more perception of sub-groups, with a stronger subgroup existence. While this effect was not seen for positive diversity beliefs.
