Summary In this paper, we review the growing literature on perceived diversity in teams. We aim to clarify the construct of perceived diversity and organize the findings in this emergent line of research. To do so, we develop a framework integrating research emerging on perceived diversity from across several different research fields. We propose that the nature of perceived diversity and its effects can be best understood by identifying the focal point of the diversity perceptions being studied: perceptions of self‐to‐team dissimilarity, of subgroup splits, and of group heterogeneity. Our review concludes that perceived self‐to‐team dissimilarity and perceived subgroup splits mostly have been linked to negative effects for individuals and groups, whereas perceived group heterogeneity has been shown to exert both positive and negative effects on group outcomes. Our review also draws attention to the problem that research on perceived diversity varies not only in definitions and conceptualizations, but also in the methodological approaches towards operationalizing perceived diversity. We conclude by discussing potential areas for future research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The issue of workforce diversity has been at the forefront of organizational concerns for many years. Not surprisingly, this topic has generated reams of research aimed at shedding light not only on the challenges involved, but also on ways these challenges have been and can be addressed. This paper reports on a comprehensive survey of the most recent studies in an effort to uncover what has been learned and what remains to be examined. While the paper is aimed primarily at researchers, it also offers a number of insights of relevance to managers and others who are responsible for designing and administering diversity-related initiatives in today's organizations.

The extent to which leadership influences employee health and the processes that underlie its effects are not well understood at present. With the aim of filling this gap, we review four distinct forms of leader behavior (task-oriented, relationship-oriented, change-oriented, and passive/destructive) and clarify the different ways in which these can be expected to have a bearing on employee health. Next, we present a model that integrates and extends these insights. This model describes five pathways through which leader behavior can influence the health of organizational members and summarizes what we know about the most important determinants, processes (mediators) and moderators of these relationships. These involve leaders engaging in personfocused action, system-or team-focused action, action to moderate the impact of contextual factors, climate control and identity management, and modelling. Finally, we identify important gaps and opportunities in the literature that need to be addressed in future research. A key conclusion is that while much has been done to explore some key pathways between leadership and health, others remain underexplored. We also outline how future research might address these in the context of a more expansive theoretical, empirical and practical approach to this emerging field of research.

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Faultlines-hypothetical dividing lines splitting a group into homogeneous subgroups based on the distribution of demographic attributes-are frequently assumed to be detrimental to group outcomes because they operationalize social categorizations. However, a literature review indicates that this is not always the case. We argue that diversity faultlines and social categorizations are not necessarily the same and that the effect of diversity faultlines is moderated by perceived social categorizations. To test this proposition, we assigned 172 participants to groups of four. Participant gender, bogus personality feedback, seating position, and colored cards were employed to create two diversity faultline conditions (weak and strong faultline). Groups worked on the Survive in the Desert task, and their interactions were coded with the discussion coding system (DCS). Social categorizations were elicited using a newly developed measure that requires participants to specify subjectively perceived salient categories. Participants stated many social

Extending theory on faultlines and subgroups, we argue that faultlines splitting a team into homogeneous subgroups can have different effects on team members' individual performance, depending on different intra-subgroup processes. Specifically, we propose that the effect of faultline strength on individual performance depends on whether a team member's subgroup includes the team leader. Building on the notion of faultline triggers, we further propose that organizational crises exacerbate this interaction because they make social support by the team leader especially important. We tested these assumptions with objective performance data collected over a period of four years from 3263 financial consultants (325 teams) while controlling for the effects of relational demography. Results showed that in teams with strong faultlines, consultants' performance decreased to a lesser extent in crisis years if the consultants shared a subgroup with their team leader. Thus, faultlines had different effects on team members from different subgroups.

Previous research has investigated the relationship between organizational tenure and performance by focusing primarily on organizational tenure of the individual employee. We propose that this approach is limited because organizational tenure should be conceptualized as relating to multiple entities including teams and their leaders. As predicted, analysis of two objective performance indicators of 1,753 employees working with 250 leaders of natural work teams in a financial services company revealed that, beyond employee organizational tenure, team leader organizational tenure and team organizational tenure diversity had positive incremental effects on employee performance. Moreover, the positive impact of employee organizational tenure was less pronounced in teams with high rather than low tenure diversity. Our findings suggest that organizations’ capacity to promote performance will be limited if they focus on organizational tenure of an individual, while neglecting the ways in which performance is shaped by organizational tenure related to multiple entities within a team.

Based on a new model of productivity in age diverse tams, ¿ndings from a six-year research program are reported in which data from more than 745 natural teams with 8,848 employees in three different ¿elds (car production, administrative work, ¿nancial services) were collected. Moreover, central assumptions of this model were tested with a representative survey of the German workforce (N = 2,000). Results support both signi¿cant advantages and disadvantages for age-mixed teams. Based on the findings, the following preconditions for the effectiveness of age diverse teams are identi¿ed: high task complexity, low salience and high appreciation of age diversity, a positive team climate, low age-discrimination, ergonomic design of work places, and the use of age differentiated leadership. Based on these insights, we developed a new training for supervisors, which addresses the aforementioned aspects and seeks to improve team performance and health of team members. It was found that the training reduces age stereotypes, team conflicts and enhances innovation. Thus, we can conclude that effective interventions for a successful integration of elderly employees in work groups are available and that combinations of measures that address ergonomic design issues, team composition and leadership are to be strongly recommended for practice.