Context Matters: A Multilevel Framework Forwork Team Diversity Research

The effects of ethnic diversity and friendship ties on managers' emotional exhaustion: a network-based case study of Caribbean information technology firms

Purpose

The purpose of this article is to empirically examine the relationship between managers' emotional exhaustion and the ethnic diversity, workload requirements, and friendship ties within their work-groups.

Design/methodology/approach

The research employs a full-network sample of all managers from an indigenously owned ethnically diverse IT firm located in the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. Using a social network design within a regression model, the relationship between managerial power and operational workload and the burnout dimension of emotional exhaustion is initially examined as a baseline model. Work-group ethnicity and friendship ties are then examined as moderators to this relationship. The authors then examine the role of work-group ethnicity and friendship ties as a buffer mechanism using an efficient frontier analysis where managers act as decision-making units.

Findings

The study indicates that ethnic diversity acts more as a “negative moderator” to emotional exhaustion, while friendship ties act as both a “positive moderator” and “buffer” to work-related emotional exhaustion.

Originality/value

This is one of the few empirical studies that has examined the issues of ethnic diversity and burnout using social network and efficient frontier methodologies. This is also one of the first empirical studies to investigate these issues using an in-depth, full-sample case study of actual, real-work network relationships.

Unraveling the effects of cultural diversity in teams: A retrospective of research on multicultural work groups and an agenda for future research

Our 2010 Journal of International Business Studies article, "Unraveling the Effects of Cultural Diversity in Teams: A Meta-analysis of Research on Multicultural Work Groups," attempted to take stock of existing research on cultural diversity in teams, to reconcile conflicting perspectives and past results, and provide a better understanding of the mechanisms and boundary conditions under which diversity affects team outcomes. To guide our analysis, we developed a theoretical framework outlining how cultural diversity leads to both process gains and losses in teams, and specifying the contextual conditions under which diversity contributes to effective team outcomes. We tested our hypotheses in a meta-analysis of research on cultural diversity in teams, encompassing 108 primary studies with a combined sample size of 10,632 work groups. The results suggested that cultural diversity does not have a direct impact on team performance but rather that the effect is indirect, mediated by process variables such as creativity, cohesion, and conflict; and is moderated by contextual influences such as team tenure, the complexity of the task, and whether the team is co-located or geographically dispersed. Unexpected findings raised important questions about the dynamics of diverse teams and underscored the need for further examination. In this Retrospective, we reflect on progress made in research on culturally diverse teams over the last decade, highlight remaining gaps and open questions, and propose an agenda for future research.

“You are not my boss!”: Managing inter-organizational collaboration in German ground handling operations

While inter-organizational coordination among firms in networks has become a widespread phenomenon and the governance of inter-organizational networks has garnered considerable attention in the management literature, the repercussions of the network form for managing and organizing work remain a considerable gap in the literature. Building on Gittell’s concept of relational coordination, we explore the inter-organizational work collaboration in four German airports’ ground handling operations. By zooming-in on ramp agents’ boundary spanning work role, our comparative study illustrates whether and how a collaboration in inter-organizational work processes is brought about in practice. Our findings reveal the various practices ramp agents deploy in order to handle the tensions emerging from divergent organizational jurisdictions and the requirements for collaboration. We also illuminate how the field-level context influences inter-organizational collaboration by setting conditions such as workload and time restrictions in distributed service delivery.

Diversity management: a systematic review

Purpose

Diversity management plays a significant role in the organization’s outcomes. This study seeks to provide a brief review of the history of diversity management and to identify the articles published on diversity management since 1991. A systematic review of the literature has been carried out to understand the literature in more detail to know the future scope of research.

Design/methodology/approach

This study provides a comprehensive systematic review of quantitative, qualitative and theoretical studies published in leading peer-reviewed management journals from 1991 to 2018 and identifies 123 articles that fall within its established search inclusion criteria.

Findings

The literature review highlighted several aspects related to diversity management. The findings of the study revealed that there is a high concentration of researches in the USA and most number of articles published in the Academy of Management Journal. Although diversity management is a very emerging topic across the globe in management literature yet there is a lack of research in developed countries. Furthermore, most studies are found empirical in nature and the majority of the studies were published during the period of 1996–2000. This finding suggests that age, gender and racial diversity have been repeatedly discussed in diversity management research while other forms of diversity have given less attention

Originality/value

This study is one of the first systematic studies that describe the in-depth analysis of diversity management literature. The significant contribution of this study is to propose the integrated model with contemporary trends and patterns of results reported in diversity research, as well as contextual factors that have received more attention to date.

Teaming Up or Down? A Multisource Study on the Role of Team Identification and Learning in the Team Diversity–Performance Link

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.

Shared leadership, diversity, and information sharing in teams

Purpose

– Shared leadership is increasingly important in today's organizations. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between shared leadership and team performance, the moderating role of demographic diversity and the mediating role of information sharing on this relationship.

Design/methodology/approach

– The research used a field study design, quantitative data of employees from two different organizations. Data were analyzed with structural equation modeling analyses.

Findings

– Shared leadership was positively associated with team performance and this association was mediated by information sharing. Demographic diversity moderated the relationship between shared leadership and team performance, such that shared leadership was more strongly associated with team performance in more diverse teams and less in less diverse teams.

Research limitations/implications

– The results found support for moderating and mediating variables, explaining under what conditions and how shared leadership is associated with team performance in organizations.

Practical implications

– The findings highlight the importance of nurturing shared leadership, in particular as teams tend to grow more diverse in our todays’ work settings. They also highlight the importance of diversity in how shared leadership unfolds its potential.

Social implications

– The research highlights that shared leadership, diversity, and information are increasingly important in today's organizations and should be considered from a more positive standpoint.

Originality/value

– This research explored the association between shared leadership, demographic diversity, and information sharing with team performance. It represents a first step in examining the moderating and mediating variables of the shared leadership and team performance association.

A multi‐level perspective on equal employment opportunity for women in Pakistan

Purpose

Informed by a relational theorisation of equal opportunity, this paper seeks to focus on multi‐level experiences and observations of women working in Pakistan's formal employment sector considering issues and challenges facing them at three levels of analysis, i.e. macro‐societal, meso‐organisational and micro‐individual.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on in‐depth qualitative interviews with 30 working women in Lahore, the paper examines multi‐level issues of women working in Pakistani organisations.

Findings

The study reveals that focusing exclusively on organisations and holding them solely accountable for equal opportunity may be inadequate as organisational structures and routines of equal opportunity are affected by both macro‐societal factors (e.g. legal, socio‐cultural) and micro‐individual factors (e.g. intersectionality, agency). In particular, the study highlights unique socio‐cultural and structural challenges facing working women in Pakistan and the ways in which these women are able to negotiate and overcome some of these challenges.

Research limitations/implications

The study is based on six Pakistani organisations located in Lahore, Punjab, and may not be generalized to represent issues and challenges of equal opportunity in other provinces of Pakistan.

Practical implications

The paper suggests that employers may pay special attention to socio‐cultural issues facing women to promote gender equality at the workplace.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the equal employment opportunity literature by exploring gender equality issues in a Muslim majority country's context.

A Contingency View of the Effects of Cognitive Diversity on Team Performance

We examined the moderating roles of team psychological safety and relationship conflict on the relationship between two forms of team cognitive diversity—expertise and expertness diversity—and team performance. We found that when team psychological safety was lower, rather than higher, expertise diversity was more negatively related to team performance, but conversely, expertness diversity was more positively related to team performance. When team relationship conflict was lower, rather than higher, expertness diversity was more positively related to team performance. Our findings advance a contingency view of the effects of cognitive diversity on team performance and suggest several implications for theory and practice.