Custom term paper on Does team diversity improve performance?

Kristina B. Dahling in her article study two types of diversity, education and nationality, arguing that educational diversity allows groups to benefit from the informational diversity stemming from heterogeneity in education; while nationality triggers social categorization processes and hinders the team from benefiting from potential informational advantages based on heterogeneous national backgrounds. (Kristina B. Dahling 2007)
This study examines the effect of educational and nationality diversity on teams’ information use. Williams and O’Reilly (1998) says that different types of diversity have different effects, some resulting primarily from changes in information processing and others from social categorization. Our primary goal is to understand how different types of diversity affect a team’s use of information.
We are considering two types of diversity that effect the performance of complex tasks: diversity of education and of nationality. Diversity of nationality can be considered as an important aspect of team composition, because number of non-US team members in the American work force has increased dramatically over the last decades”. (Kristina B. Dahling 2007).
Diversity of education is also relevant because teams working on complex cognitive tasks in organizations are typically comprised of people with different educational
Backgrounds, which represent distinct thought worlds (Dougherty, 1992, 188).
It is also necessary to point that working in diversity teams can be challenging, as there maybe be some difficulties in team members communication, coordination of work and so in the whole performing.
Sujin K. Horwitz provided estimates of the relationship between team diversity and team outcomes. In particular, “the effects of task-related and bio-demographic diversity at the group-level were meta-analyzed to test the hypothesis of synergistic performance resulting from diverse employee teams”. (Sujin K. Horwitz, 2006)custom term paper
This analysis showed the positive impact of task-related diversity on team performance, but social integration and bio-demographic diversity had no discernible effect of team diversity. The author also shows the implications of research and practical advices for their implementation.
A significant amount of literature regarding diversity and culture. The most interesting is point of view of Marian N. Ruderman on the problems of organizations within conventional hierarchical and functional boundaries, and a growing use of teams that span these boundaries. This book has seven scientific papers from conference: “Work Team Dynamics and Productivity Within the Context of Diversity” .( Marian N., 1996).
A very important and hot issue within the problem is the top-management team diversity and organization performance. There are several research on the relationship between top management team (TMT) diversity and organizational performance, and special attention is always paid to the nature of TMT team processes in interaction with TMT diversity. Christophe Boone, Walter Hendriks (2009) study three team mechanisms: collaborative behavior, accurate information exchange, and decision-making decentralization, and their impact of TMT diversity on financial performance of 33 information technology firms, focusing on two fundamentally different forms of TMT diversity: functional-background (FB) and locus-of-control (LOC). (Boone Ch., Hendriks W., 2009, p. 170).
At last, Kelley Holland covers the topic of multicultural teams, that are present in management consulting, where the “big firms tend to be every bit as global as the clients they serve”. For example, the Bain & Company, which has a special strategy while making a team of employees, as it tries to avoid any gaffes or missteps because of cultural differences while “trying to build people who think globally and think like global managers”. (Kelley Holland, 2007)
In conclusion, To understand the effects of nationality diversity, we consider range, depth, and integration as sequential processes. As argued by Gibson (2001), there is a tradeoff between variety of diversity factors and a teams’ ability to effectively integrate, and with less variety of factors, teams are better positioned to good performance. Overall, this study suggests that diversity has a complex relationship with culture, education and nationality. This is undoubtedly due to the globalization processes. Our results suggest that the effects of diversity on performance occurred regardless of the level of conflict or the presence of bi-cultures in the team. As we suspected, the effective performance lies in capitalizing on all of the strengths of each employee of the team.
References

1. Nadler, Leonardю (1994). The Handbook of Human Resource Development. New York: John Wiley & Sons
2. Kristina B.Dahling. Developing diversity. Retrieved from www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/diverse.html
3. Cagan, J., Vogel, C. M. (2002). Creating breakthrough products: Innovation from product planning to program approval. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
4. Dougherty, D. (1992). Interpretive barriers to successful product innovation in large firms. Organization
Science, 3: 179-202.
5. Horwitz Sujin K.(2006). THE EFFECTS OF TEAM DIVERSITY ON TEAM OUTCOMES: A META-ANALYTIC REVIEW OF TEAM DEMOGRAPHY. Department of Management and Marketing, Cameron School of Business, University of St. Thomas, Houston
6. Ruderman M.N, Hughes-James M. W., Jackson S. E. (1996). Selected Research on Work Team Diversity, APA and CCL Press
7. Boone, Christophe; Hendriks,Walter. (2009). Top Management Team Diversity and Firm Performance: Moderators of Functional-Background and Locus-of-Control Diversity. MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
Vol.55, No.2, February 2009, pp. 165-180
8. Kelley Holland.(2007). How Diversity Makes a Team Click. The New York Times. April 22, 2007