A Cross-Level Research On The Mechanism Of Employee Diversity Effect

Economic globalization will bring employees diversity, In-depth understanding and effective using diversity effects on the employees, teams and enterprises is the key factors for enterprise to compete in the globalization. There are three viewpoints of diversity effects, which are positive effects, negative effects and mixed-effects. The view of positive effects highlights the positive effects of diversity on decision quality and group performance. The view of negative effects highlights the negative effects of diversity on group process and outcome. The view of mixed-effects believes that both positive and negative effects exist. The mechanisms of diversity effect research focus on exploring that diversity have a beneficial or harmful effect on the process and group performance under which situational factors and by which group process. The situational factors include population emotional responses, cognitive outcomes, symbolism and communication patterns. The process mechanisms include conflict, social integration, integration of behavior, learning, discussion and more. People have almost reached a consensus that the positive and negative effects exist, therefore the emphasis of diversity research focused on the mechanism of diversity effect.There are two major deficiencies in existing research. The first one is about the study level. Most diversity research focused on team-level effects of diversity, while ignoring that diversity itself has a multi-level characteristics, diversity effects will be reflected in the level of the individual and the enterprise outcome. The second one is about the moderation and mediation mechanisms. There are some related studies of diversity moderation and mediation process, but as the lack of overall theoretical and systematic logic, which have little help to explain the contradictory conclusions. This study therefore started to explore more based on insufficient research:on the one hand consider the study level of diversity and divide it into two levels of individual dissimilarity and teams heterogeneous; on the other hand use information-elaboration as mediation process and intrinsic factors (such as team atmosphere, personal attitudes, etc.) as moderation process to construct the theoretical mode of "diversity-information-elaboration-performance" and propose appropriate hypotheses. On this basis, the author combines empirical and experimental research method to test the hypotheses and obtain the following conclusions:First, diversity is a multi-level constructs and it can be operationally defined as team of heterogeneity and individual dissimilarities at team level and individual level; information-elaboration can be operationally defined as information sharing and individual communication behavior at team level and individual level; performance can be operationally defined as team performance and personal information related performance at team level and individual level. Diversity effect is a process that team heterogeneity and individual dissimilarity have impact on team and individual performance respectively. However, on the one hand team information sharing is decided by individual communication behavior and team task performance is decided by individual learning performance and innovative behavior; on the other hand, personal communication behavior, individual learning performance and innovative behavior will be cross-level influenced by team-level variables. Therefore under the guidance of the multi-level theory, the integrated effects model is divided into two independent and interrelated models.Secondly, this study carries out two sub-studies to verify the integration model by combining empirical and behavioral experiments research method from the individual level and team-level respectively. Study one proves the mechanism of individual-level diversity influencing employees’ personal information associated performance by empirical study. The study find that perceived dissimilarity has negative effect on individual learning performance and the level of individual innovative behavior. The negative effect of perceived dissimilarity is mainly through the mediation process of communication effectiveness. This study further explores the effect of team-level situational factors on the relationship between perceived dissimilarity and information-related performance, and identifies the cross-level negative moderation process of team heterogeneity and diversity psychological characteristics. Study two proves the mechanism of team-level diversity influencing team task related performance by behavior experiment study. The study finds that the degree of heterogeneity and heterogeneity structure both have significant effects on team task related performance. On the one hand the higher degree of team heterogeneity the better team task-related performance, on the other hand teams with crosscut diversity attributes will better perform than teams with convergent diversity attributes in team task-related performance. Attitude towards diversity and team openness atmosphere moderate the effect of the degree of team heterogeneity and heterogeneity structure on team task-related performance and team information sharing mediates the impact of the moderation effects. Finally study two also explores the cross-level influence mechanism about how individual-level communication behavior and personal performance has impact on team information sharing and team performance through team-level configuration. The results show that individual communication behaviors’ different structures have different effects on information sharing, the mean of participation and contribution has a positive effect on information sharing and the minimum of participation and contribution also has a positive effect on information sharing. Employee learning performance and individual innovation behaviors’ different structures have different effects on team task-related performance, the mean of employee learning performance and individual innovation behavior has a positive effect on team task-related performance; the maximum of employee learning performance and individual innovation behavior also has a positive effect on team task-related performance; the variance of individual innovation behavior has a negative effect on team task-related performance. Finally, the research can not only illustrate diversity has significant impact on team and individual performance which prove diversity is an important factor; it also clarifies the condition and reason of diversity effect which not only expands and enriches the diversity theory but also provide some guidance for enterprises to fully play diversity effects’ potential advantages.