The interplay of diversity training and diversity beliefs on team creativity in nationality diverse teams

Attaining value from nationality diversity requires active diversity management, which organizations often employ in the form of diversity training programs. Interestingly, however, the previously reported effects of diversity training are often weak and, sometimes, even negative. This situation calls for research on the conditions under which diversity training helps or harms teams. We propose that diversity training can increase team creativity, but only for teams with less positive pretraining diversity beliefs (i.e., teams with a greater need for such training) and that are sufficiently diverse in nationality. Comparing the creativity of teams that attended nationality diversity training versus control training, we found that for teams with less positive diversity beliefs, diversity training increased creative performance when the team’s nationality diversity was high, but undermined creativity when the team’s nationality diversity was low. Diversity training had less impact on teams with more positive diversity beliefs, and training effects were not contingent upon these teams’ diversity. Speaking to the underlying process, we showed that these interactive effects were driven by the experienced team efficacy of the team members. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for nationality diversity management

David against Goliath? Group size and bystander effects in virtual knowledge sharing

Knowledge management has been identified as a key factor for sustaining a competitive advantage in today’s corporate world. A fundamental aspect of knowledge management in a global economy is the sharing of information in online groups. Most researchers and practitioners have so far assumed that a large knowledge sharing group increases response rates, velocity of receiving a response and quality. However, psychological research under the umbrella of the so-called bystander effect suggests counter-intuitively that, with an increase in group size, the likelihood of helping decreases. This study provides empirical support for the fact that a) the bystander effect is also present in virtual (knowledge sharing) environments, b) that group size influences response quality and c) that the negative impact of social inhibition might decrease again in very large groups. The practical trade-offs that managers have to take into account when designing knowledge sharing forums are discussed

Leveraging age diversity in times of demographic change: The crucial role of leadership

With demographic change, organizations today are seeing changes in societal make-up translated to the composition of their workforce. In the future, younger and older employees will have to work together synergistically to achieve good performance. The authors argue that it will be largely up to leaders to prevent the negative effects of age diversity, i.e. social categorization and intergroup bias, and to facilitate the positive effects of age diversity, i.e. the sharing of unique knowledge resources held by young and old. The authors argue that certain leadership behaviors and especially their combinations have great promise in leading diverse teams, and highlight why they should be used in conjunction with positive beliefs about diversity.</jats:p

Leveraging age diversity in times of demographic change: the crucial role of leadership

With demographic change, organizations today are seeing changes in societal make-up translated to the composition of their workforce. In the future, younger and older employees will have to work together synergistically to achieve good performance. The authors argue that it will be largely up to leaders to prevent the negative effects of age diversity, i.e. social categorization and intergroup bias, and to facilitate the positive effects of age diversity, i.e. the sharing of unique knowledge resources held by young and old. The authors argue that certain leadership behaviors and especially their combinations have great promise in leading diverse teams, and highlight why they should be used in conjunction with positive beliefs about diversity