Speaker: Jia Li，Assistant Professor Human Performance Management Group, Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands).

Time: 2017-11-17 13:00 - 14:30

Venue: Room 1113, Wang Kezhen Building

Abstract: Re-conceptualizing teams as open systems with malleable boundaries, we theorize and examine how team diversification (the degree to which teams become more diverse over time via team membership change) affect team performance change over time. We test this dynamic relationship, using a sample of 279 teams (3,277 individuals) in a large financial consulting firm over a five-year period during which a legislative change in market regulation posed a risk for team performance and prompted teams to alter task strategies. Analyses with latent growth models (LGM) reveal that team diversification has preventative benefits for team performance in this adverse task environment. Specifically, we find that team diversification in both organizational tenure and in gender alleviate the degree of team performance decline. Concurrent team size change moderates the impact of organizational tenure diversification such that when more members join the team, the preventative benefit of organizational tenure diversification becomes smaller. These findings suggest that increasing team diversity over time facilitate team adaptation and performance in adverse task environments. Our study extends team diversity research from a static theoretical space about teams’ being diverse over time to a dynamic one about teams’ becoming diverse over time. It also adds important nuances to dynamic team composition and team adaptation research by suggesting adaptation in specific team compositional inputs as important dimensions to be considered in team membership change.

Host: Changqin Lu