| In the past four decades research on team diversity has grown increasingly sophisticated, incorporating several dimensions of team diversity, performance, and team processes. In examining the process and performance outcomes of team diversity, this dissertation contributes to extant research primarily in three ways. First, while examining the relationship between team diversity and process and performance outcomes, this dissertation examined the moderating influence of the organizational demographic context. Second, while past research has focused primarily on internal team processes, the present research also examined teams' external relationships. Inter-team cooperation as well as intra-team cooperation, were proposed as process outcomes of team diversity. Third, by incorporating multiple conceptualizations of diversity (additive and configurational) this dissertation attempted to contribute to research on the measurement of diversity in organizations.; Data were collected from a large US based office equipment company. The data included employees' demographic records (age, race, gender, education, tenure), attitudinal measures, and team performance measures. Based on available data, the dissertation included approximately 1820 service teams organized into 68 service regions. A multi-level analyses strategy was used to test the hypotheses proposed. Results indicated that certain aspects of organizational demography such as ethnic diversity and gender diversity influenced team level relationships between diversity and performance. Diverse teams performed better in diverse service regions than in homogeneous service regions. Further, at the service region level, gender diversity was positively related to cooperation as well as performance. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to past research. Practical as well as theoretical implications of the findings are also outlined. |
