| The increasing diversity in the workplace and the popularity of team work are bringing more people to work with others who differ in their backgrounds, values, and assumptions. As this increased diversity represents both opportunities and challenges, managers are looking for ways to maximize its benefits while minimizing its disadvantages. The results of this study may help managers to deal with diversity issues by laying out some of the mechanisms through which diversity influences team effectiveness. This study increases our understanding of the frequency, distribution, and content of communication that characterize diversity work teams, as well as how these communication patterns influence team effectiveness.The study was conducted in three different plants of a manufacturing company. The sample included 71 work teams with a total of 439 team members and 44 supervisors: 9 management teams, 38 professional teams, and 24 production teams. The procedure involved three steps: identification of work teams, personal distribution of surveys to all employees, and collection of demographic data (sex, race, age, tenure, and education) from archival sources. Participants completed the survey in the work setting during normal working hours and returned it to me through internal mail or in person. Multiple regression and path analysis was used to examine the extent to which communication process variables mediate the relationship between diversity and effectiveness.The results support the basic notion of this study, that team diversity has an effect on team effectiveness mediated by the communication patterns that develop within the team. Taken as a whole, this study illustrates the value of examining the objective demographic composition and the subjective psychological salience of social identities in teams when attempting to understand team behavior and effectiveness. |
