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Work Teams and Diversity

Last October the Center, New York University, and the American Psychological Association cosponsored a three-day conference in Greensboro on "Work-team Dynamics and Productivity in the Context of Diversity." This meeting was primarily for researchers; its goal was to bring together people currently engaged in studying work teams and diversity, to facilitate an exchange of information among them, and to stimulate further research by defining fundamental questions. Nevertheless, the topic is important to anyone concerned with the development of human resources. So, with the permission of conference organizers, I sent Bernie Ghiselin, a former Editor of I&O, to observe and to take notes on issues that would be of interest to a more general audience. The following is his report. [Ed.]

In recent years the U.S. workforce has become increasingly diverse, adding more and more new workers who are not the traditional white males. At the same time, organizations are being confronted with problems that cannot be effectively dealt with by staying within conventional hierarchical and functional boundaries, and thus we see a growing use of work groups, or teams, that span these boundaries.

Each of these developments - diversity and the use of teams - has been thought about and studied a great deal, with particular attention paid to its relation to organizational effectiveness. It is only now, however, that people in organizations and researchers have begun to look closely at the two in combination.

At the October conference, fifty-nine participants met to hear and discuss forty-one papers. In the course of the presentations, poster sessions, plenary sessions, small-group discussions, and one-on-one exchanges, a great deal of information was generated. Based on my notes of the discussions, on my reading of papers that will appear in two conference publications (see sidebar), and on a series of talks I had with Marian Ruderman (who, along with Susan Jackson of New York University, chaired the conference), I have chosen three issues that I think people who are concerned with human-resource development but unfamiliar with the research on teams and diversity are likely to find interesting: the challenge of defining diversity, the search for effective intervention strategies, and the question of whether researchers should make policy recommendations.

Defining Diversity

There are many definitions of diversity in use today, and although this provides for a richness of perspective, it creates problems. For instance, evaluating research that has already been done, especially if you are trying to compare studies, can be very difficult, as can designing interventions based on research that uses different definitions. Thus, the question "What does the word diversity mean?" was discussed in great detail at the conference.

In general, diversity refers to the ways that people in organizations differ. That sounds simple, but defining it more specifically is a challenge because people in organizations differ in a great many ways - race, gender, ethnic group, age, personality, cognitive style, tenure, organizational function, and more. There is also the fact that diversity not only involves how people think of others and how this affects their interaction but how they conceive of themselves.

Stella Nkomo (in press) suggested that one way to approach the question is to consider "whether diversity should be broadly defined or narrowly defined."

A broad definition would see diversity as including all the possible ways that members of work teams differ. Thus, it would consider differences of race, gender, age, and other demographic categories as essentially the same as differences of values, abilities, organizational function, tenure, and personality.

A narrow definition, on the other hand, would see diversity as including only differences based on race and gender. Thus, only the traditional issues of discrimination and exclusion of members of these groups in organizations would be considered.

Each definition has its advantages. The former could be used to develop a single integrative theory of how diversity affects work teams, whereas the latter would focus attention and resources on differences that clearly affect organizations. In Nkomo's view, however, "Neither . . . is entirely satisfactory for capturing the basic complexity of the concept."

The problem with the broad view is that, in seeing all differences among people as the same, it makes diversity a benign, almost meaningless, concept. Yet the effects of diversity are not benign. Differences of race, ethnicity, and gender have resulted in many people being given unequal access to opportunities and resources. With this background, how can these differences be understood in the same way as those of personality, cognitive style, or function, which may well have organizational effects but certainly not of the same magnitude?

Nkomo, however, pointed out that the answer isn't as simple as relying on a narrow definition that restricts treatments of diversity to race and gender. Historically, this approach has had its problems. It led to research that usually focused on only one of the differences (race or gender) at a time. Another is that it encouraged the view that only women and minorities have race and gender. Everyone has race and gender.

Nkomo joined others at the conference in pointing out "that the implied central concept underlying the meaning of diversity is identity and the different bases upon which identity can be formed." They also argued that individuals have multiple identities. Race and gender can interact with each other as well as with personality style, organization function, age, and tenure. Thus, understanding the multidimensional nature of identity is important in defining diversity in work teams. When individuals form a work group based on a functional specialty, they also bring along aspects of themselves grounded in race, gender, and ethnicity.

The issue of definition was summed up, in Nkomo's words, in this way: "The challenge before us is understanding the interactive effects of multiple diversity. This raises the thorny research problem of how to determine the relative saliency of the different identities an individual may bring to a work team."

Thus, we should be explicit in recognizing the multiple sources of identity - for example, racial identity, gender identity, ethnic identity, and functional-group identity - and not assume that all operate the same in a work team or that one can be a surrogate for another (Skevington & Baker, 1989; Tinsley, 1994).

Others at the conference also supported this point. For example, Joseph McGrath, Jennifer Berdahl, and Holly Arrow (in press) proposed a framework for studying diversity in work groups that looks at five clusters of attributes:

  • personal demographics;

  • knowledge, skills, and abilities;

  • values, beliefs, and attitudes;

  • personality and cognitive and behavioral style; and

  • organizational demographics.

They believe that the different clusters have different effects in groups. In addition, McGrath and his colleagues argued that the nature of the work groups also makes a difference. Group members behave differently depending on whether they are members of crews, task forces, or teams.

"Each cluster has a very complex relationship to other clusters," said McGrath in his conference presentation. "We must not keep acting in the literature as if when you've seen one kind of diversity you've seen them all." He added that, since the effects of diversity on different attributes are not generic, variations on the different clusters of attributes create different types of group dynamics.

Intervention Strategies

Another important issue considered at the conference was, "What are effective strategies for intervening in diverse work teams?" One well-known intervention was challenged and other perspectives were suggested.

Diverse work teams often have problems resulting from what psychologists call in-group/out-group dynamics. This is the well-known tendency for group members to treat some people as insiders and others as outsiders. According to social-identity theory, the simple act of categorizing people into distinctive groups has debilitating effects on attempts to achieve collective goals. In-group/out-group dynamics can result in stereotyping, intergroup competition, distrust, and prejudice, all of which can inhibit effective group functioning.

A longstanding belief from group theory is that contact, or increased exposure to others, promotes harmony and minimizes differences. From this came the idea that the intervention of recruiting a diverse workforce can reduce prejudice.

A study by Pamela Tolbert, Alice Andrews, and Tal Simons (in press), however, shows contact alone is not enough. Examining the proportion of women in academic departments over a twelve-year span, they found that increases in proportionate size of a minority group did not decrease discrimination. The increase in women faculty members was explained as much by competition as by the contact. Once women gained sufficient numbers, there was competition with men for resources.

This work raises the question about the type of contact and context needed to reduce intergroup conflict. Gregory Northcraft, Jeffrey Polzer, Margaret Neale, and Rod Kramer (in press) argued that the type of contact needed is similar to the contact used in negotiations. Based on their work with functionally diverse teams, they pointed out that problems arise because team members often assume that differences are conflicting. In reality, many desires of different group members are not as opposing as they might initially appear. They suggested that the language and strategies of negotiation can be useful in helping team members turn differences into win-win strategies.

Marilynn Brewer's work suggests other strategies for intervention. Brewer (in press) looked at in-group/out-group dynamics at a very basic level in the laboratory, where she experimented with techniques for minimizing it. In her work, laboratory subjects were given a "social dilemma" conflict between "individual self-interest" and the "collective welfare." The dilemma was the choice faced under conditions of gradual depletion of a common resource, such as petroleum, rain forests, or water supplies. The collective welfare was preserved if each individual restrained self-interest on behalf of the common good.

Groups in three experiments were identified as either oriented toward the organization as a whole or toward a subgroup. Across all experiments, as the resource pool approached depletion, subjects given a subgroup identity harvested significantly more of the common resource than did subjects oriented toward the organization as a whole.

Brewer and her colleagues were able to reduce this tendency with two interventions. One treated members of different subgroups as having a single super-ordinate identity. In other words, it emphasized the common goal of the group as a whole rather than the goals of the individual subgroups. Individuals were thereby able to suppress self-interest for the sake of the collective.

The second intervention involved "crossing categories and functions," structuring role relationships within groups. Brewer pointed out that work teams are often structured in such a way that roles or functions within the team are correlated with identity groups. In a multifunctional team, it is likely that gender and role are correlated. For example, in a team comprised of engineers and human-resource specialists, it is likely that the engineers are male and the human-resource professionals female.

In the laboratory, Brewer has experimented with groups in which identity is not correlated with function. She found that this type of set-up leads to a reduction in bias in the perception of and evaluation of team members. This work suggests that team problems may be alleviated by avoiding the blending of social identities and functional roles.

However, Brewer has acknowledged the difficulties in applying the findings of laboratory studies to the workplace: "In many work contexts, role assignments cannot be so easily distributed as they are in a laboratory experiment. The larger organizational context from which work groups are created and composed introduces potentially important constraints on the possible role structures of such work teams."

A very different approach has been taken by Robin Ely (in press). Her work in both the field and the classroom has focused on understanding the experiences of privilege and oppression as a way to help members of diverse groups work effectively together. She believes that all individuals have experienced both dominance and oppression and that understanding both aspects of identity are important sources of insight that team members can use to enhance relationships at work.

In her work on oppression in the classroom, Ely asked students to examine their attitudes as members of a "dominant" rather than an "oppressed" group. Once the students (including blacks and ethnics) overcame reluctance and allowed themselves to examine their dominant identities, they better understood their behavior from this position of privilege.

"My observations from teaching about dominant as well as oppressed group experiences suggest that people resist examining their own experiences as members of dominant groups, but that this resistance is well worth overcoming," Ely wrote.

This work has important implications for the development of new intervention strategies. From her work, Ely suggested that research - and, by extension, future interventions - move away from a "concept of identity as unitary, fixed, and internally consistent toward one in which identity is best seen as a set of contradictory, fluid, contextually constrained positions within which people are capable of exercising choice. It then makes sense to examine the impact of organizations as historically situated contextual constraints that can shape and reshape, create and recreate identity in potentially infinite ways. This represents a radical reframing of the role of identity in organizations."

Policy Recommendations

During the conference, a number of participants raised the question of whether researchers should make policy recommendations to organizations. Some felt there hasn't been enough "fermentation time" to offer definite recommendations about work-team diversity.

"I'm not doing research on the 'right' answer. It's too big," said one academic during a meeting. "I'm doing research in my corner. If you're doing research in one small corner, it's hard to be an advocate. It's hard to finalize it." Another admitted she'd gotten her wrists slapped "for being too speculative. I don't even like using the word diversity in my papers."

During a plenary session, Gregory Northcraft was asked what advice he gives business students. "We don't know if the knowledge is fully transferable because the research hasn't gone that far," he said. "I think that means we teach our students exactly that. That there are important issues we don't know enough about to give a direct answer. But we do know enough to say there are issues here. A lot of what I do in MBA classes is to sensitize students. The more we can do to sensitize, the more they will be likely to learn what they need to learn."

"I don't think you can ever make complex recommendations," Pamela Tolbert said. "We need to respect the limits of our knowledge and not just respond to pressure to give answers. There are problems out there for which we don't have answers. If you want to pursue diversity because you want to get more ideas, more creativity, more synergy, be very, very careful because there are lots of unintended consequences that flow from the best diversity efforts. Which is not to say, 'Don't do it.' Just be cautious and use your best judgment."

Susan Jackson, who has published widely on workforce diversity, and others took sharp issue. "I think we have a lot to say about policy and I'm not going to let you off that easily," Jackson said. From research on intergroup relations, from social identity and conflict theories, she said, "We can talk about providing equal access to resources and opportunities, and help organizations understand how inequalities of opportunity constrain performance. We can offer advice about how to design and conduct fair and unbiased selection interviews and performance appraisals, especially in the context of teamwork. This research has many practical implications." Jackson would like to see researchers share the responsibility of thinking through these implications and helping organizations take action. Researchers understand the phenomena associated with diversity better than most people. They can use their knowledge and models to assist organizations in evaluating how to manage people and in experimenting with new ways o Conclusion

How diversity affects the dynamics of work teams and thus influences effectiveness is a complex question. To date, research suggests that diverse groups tend to be more creative and perform better on problem-solving tasks than homogeneous groups, but they also appear to have lower levels of social integration and higher turnover than homogeneous groups (Elsass & Graves, 1994; Sessa, Jackson, & Rapini, in press). There is still, however, a great deal to be learned; in particular we need to know much more about the specific conditions that foster the benefits of team diversity while minimizing its disadvantages. As the October conference indicates, there is a solid core of researchers working to define and answer the fundamental questions that will in time enable us to learn what we need to know.

Bibliography

Brewer, M. (in press). Managing diversity: Can we reap the benefits without paying the costs? In S. E. Jackson & M. N. Ruderman (Eds.), Work team diversity: Paradigms and perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Elsass, P., & Graves, L. (1994, October). Unraveling the paradox of diversity: A theoretical model. In S. E. Jackson & M. N. Ruderman (Chairs), Work-team dynamics and productivity in the context of diversity. Conference held at the Center for Creative Leadership, Greensboro, NC.

Ely, R. (in press). The role of dominant identity and experience in organizational work on diversity. In S. E. Jackson & M. N. Ruderman (Eds.), Work team diversity: Paradigms and perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

McGrath, J., Berdahl, J., & Arrow, H. (in press). Traits, expectations, culture and clout: The dynamics of diversity in work groups. In S. E. Jackson & M. N. Ruderman (Eds.), Work team diversity: Paradigms and perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Morrison, A. (in press). Closing the gap between research and practice. In S. E. Jackson & M. N. Ruderman (Eds.), Work team diversity: Paradigms and perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Nkomo, S. M. (in press). Identity and the complexity of diversity. In S. E. Jackson & M. N. Ruderman (Eds.), Work team diversity: Paradigms and perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Northcraft, G., Polzer, J., Neale, M., & Kramer, R. (in press). Diversity, social identity, and performance: Emergent social dynamics in cross-functional teams. In S. E. Jackson & M. N. Ruderman (Eds.), Work team diversity: Paradigms and perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Sessa, V. I., Jackson, S. E., & Rapini, D. T. (in press). Workforce diversity: The good, the bad, and the reality. In G. R. Ferris (Ed.), Handbook of human resource management. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Skevington, S., & Baker, D. (Eds.). (1989). The social identity of women. London: Sage.

Tinsley, H. (Ed.). (1994). Special issue on racial identity and vocational behavior. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 44. Tolbert, P., Andrews, A., & Simons, T. (in press). The effects of group proportions on group dynamics. In S. E. Jackson & M. N. Ruderman (Eds.), Work team diversity: Paradigms and perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Conference Publications

Work Team Diversity: Paradigms and Perspectives (working title), edited by Susan E. Jackson and Marian N. Ruderman, published by the American Psychological Association. In addition to the papers cited here by Marilynn Brewer, Robin Ely, Joseph McGrath and colleagues, Stella Nkomo, Gregory Northcraft and colleagues, Ann Morrison, and Pamela Tolbert and colleagues, the volume will include: "Perspectives for Understanding Diverse Work Teams: Introduction and Overview," by Susan E. Jackson and Marian N. Ruderman; "Relational Demography: The Missing Link in Vertical Dyad Linkage," by Anne S. Tsui, Katherine R. Xin, and Terri D. Egan; "Managing Distances and Differences in Geographically Distributed Work Groups," by David J. Armstrong and Paul Cole; "Commentary: The Importance of Contexts in Studies of Diversity," by Harry C. Triandis; and "The Multidimensionality of Diversity: Challenges and Directions for Research," by Taylor Cox, Jr.

Work-Team Dynamics and Productivity in the Context of Diversity: Selected Conference Papers (working title), edited by Marian N. Ruderman, Martha W. Hughes-James, and Susan E. Jackson, published by the Center for Creative Leadership. "Effects of Group Diversity on Perceptions of Group and Self among Scientists and Engineers," by Nancy DiTomaso, Rene Cordero, and George F. Farris; "Personality Diversity and its Relationship to Managerial Team Productivity," by Keith M. Eigel and Karl W. Kuhnert; "The Effect of Value Difference on Social Interaction Processes and Job Outcomes: Implications for Managing Diversity," by Michele J. Gelfand, Kristine M. Kuhn, and Phanikiran Radhakrishnan; "The Effects of the Ethnic and Gender Diversity of Work Teams on the Perceptions of Performance Outputs," by Michael T. Herron; "Culture and Leadership among Taiwanese and U.S. Workers: Do Values Influence Leadership Ideals?" by Keith James, Dz-Lyang Chen, and Russell Cropanzano; "The Limitations of Organizational Demography: Can Diversity Climate be Enhanced in the Absence of Teamwork?" by Ellen E. Kossek, Susan C. Zonia, and Willard Young; "The Cost of Leading Diversity: Effects of Group Diversity on Leaders' Perceptions," by Margarita Mayo, James R. Meindl, and Juan-Carlos Pastor; and "The Vicious and Virtuous Facets of Workforce Diversity," by Sumita Raghuram and Raghu Garud.

Taken from:

Issues and Observations Publication

Vol. 15 No. 1 1995

Published by permission from Center for Creative Leadership

For more info go to the information source: inforM - Univ. of Maryland



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