Team diversity and performance in management students: Towards an integrated model

Abstract

A special effort is being made in higher education to adapt to the dynamics required by business management. Teamwork is a priority in business environments so it should also be one among university students. Team diversity and its links to performance comprise one of the aspects most widely worked on, but outcomes are still inconsistent.

In this paper we advance the understanding of the relationship between team diversity and performance in two ways: first by blending the two main theoretical approaches (social categorization holding that diversity has a negative effect on team performance versus information/decision-making-based theories that hold the opposite), taking conflict as a mediator variable; and second by contextualizing the link through a contingency approach in which initial within-group cohesion, strength of leadership, and prior experience of group members in working as a group are taken as significant moderator variables. We base our work on an Input-Mediator-Outcome model framework and blend it with a Categorization-Elaboration Model.

The results show that only in the right context (group cohesion, strength of leadership, and prior experience of group members) can diversity produce improvements in the performance of working teams.