Lecture 8 - Team Diversity Flashcards
What is diversity?
The degree to which differences exist between members of a social unit / perception that another person is different from the self.
What are the two approaches of viewing team diversity?
Main effects approach and Categorization Elaboration Model (CEM)
What is the Main Effects Approach?
The prediction that diversity has a strong (negative or positive) effect on team’s outcomes (performance, innovation, success, turnover).
What are the two Main Effects Approaches regarding diversity?
1) The information/decision making perspective (positive) and 2) the social categorization perspective (negative)
Why is diversity good from pov of the information/decision making perspective?
- Bigger pool of info, knowledge and perspectives.
- Bigger behavioural potential
- Information advantage
RESULT: Better problem solving, decision making, creativity and innovation.
Why is diversity bad from pov of the social categorization perspective?
Social categorization* and intergroup bias
*(not inherently bad if it does not lead to integroup bias or identity threat)
What is social categorization?
Perceptual grouping of people (dutch vs non-dutch, men vs women etc.)
What is integroup bias?
More favourable perceptions regarding a similar teammembers (ingroup) compared to dissimilar (outgroup)
What is (one of the possible!) social categorization consecutive outcomes?
Diversity -> social categorization and integroup bias -> negative performance, negative satisfaction and turnover increase.
What are some of the ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘bad’’ diversity types?
Info processing diversity - ‘‘good’’ educational background, tenure, functional background, job-related diversity (better info and processing)
Social category diversity - “bad”” - nationality, gender, age, race, demographic diversity (categorization&integroup bias)
What is the main idea of the Categorization Elaboration Model?
It refines the decision making perspective - what information processing to be achived for benefits to occur - INFORMATION ELABORATION
When does diversity promote elaboration?
When there are:
1) Task requirements
2) Cognitive capacity to share info
3) Member motivation (facilitating link between diversity and performance)
When does diversity lead to social categorization?
When there is salience of categorization.
What are the types of salience for social categorization?
- Cognitive accessibiity
- Normative fit
- Comparative fit
What is cognitive accessibility?
How easily does a diversity attribute come to mind (gender, and ethnicity are attributes with high cognitive accessibility).
What is normative fit?
The perceived behavior of another member corresponds to our knowledge based-expectations (i.e. similar expertise and/or point of view)
What is comparative fit?
The level of difficulty in splitting two groups into subgroups.
Examples:
High comparative fit - Two senior female engineers, and two junior male marketers. (Seniority and job type are easily attributed to gender).
Low comparative fit - One senior male engineer, one junior male marketer + one senior female marketer, and one junior male engineer. (Seniority and job type are not easily attributed to gender)
What are group faultlines?
Hypothetical splitting of a group into subgroups based on one or more attributes. Diversity often leads to social categorization in such groups.
When does social categorization lead to integroup bias?
When there is an identity threat.
What is an identity threat?
Uniqueness is called into question, discriminated etc. => Feelings for restoring identity come up => Differential evaluation and integroup bias occur.
Why is integroup bias bad?
It affects each aspect of the team - performance, satisfaction, turnover.
What should be done for diversity to lead to sucess?
Avoiding integroup bias (following norms, valuing each member) and promting information elaboration (be inclusive of everyone, work with differences rather than majority, aim for equal representation etc.)
How does the CEM model perceive diversity (negatively or positively)?
Both. All dimensions of diversity can have both a negative and positive effect.
How to excel in diversity in management scenarios?
- Preventing intergroup bias
- Fostering information elaboration
- Creating shared identity
- Treating members fairly and respectively.
