Although diverse teams offer the promise of creative problem-solving and greater cooperation among functions, they also bring pitfalls. People tend to cling to those similar to them both inside and outside of a team, so team managers must find ways to make sure the team's goals come first.
Three German professors sent questionnaires to 129 members of 20 multidisciplinary software and project management teams. They looked at the relationship among:
The professors wanted to know how those three variables affected "organizational citizenship," defined as "the extent to which employees go above and beyond the call of duty to aid fellow workers and contribute to collective success…" They also looked at the effects on other positive qualities such as members' sense of identification with their teams and loyalty to their organizations.
Diversity only reduced these positive qualities when team members felt they had to work together to get their jobs done but didn't feel there were team goals, or in the opposite situation: they felt they were held to team goals, but did little with their fellow team members to achieve those goals collectively.
Source: Van der Vegt, G., E. Van de Vliert, and A. Oosterhof (03), "Informational Dissimilarity and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: The Role of Intrateam Interdependence and Team Identification," Academy of Management Journal 46(6): 715.
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© 2009 by Jim Morgan. All rights reserved.