Being Different, But Close: How and When Faultlines Enhance Team Learning

Abstract

Although work‐group diversity may have potential positive impact on team learning and performance, the way diversity characteristics are distributed, influences whether teams exploit this potential. In this quantitative field study on 52 teams in two health‐care organizations, we examined the relationship between informational faultlines (the demographic alignment of the informational characteristics of the members in a group, creating relatively homogeneous subgroups) and team learning. We used a moderated‐mediation model to test the interplay between faultline strength (the alignment of characteristics) and distance (between subgroups, based on the characteristics) on task and process learning. We hypothesized and found that strong but close subgroups stimulate task and process learning in teams. This study also provides evidence that transactive memory is a mediator in the relationship between the interaction of faultline strength and distance with task and process learning.

A Meta-Analytic Literature Review on Organization-Level Drivers of Team Learning

“…Shared cognitions. A smaller number of six studies focused on the relationship between team learning and shared cognitions, including transactive memory systems (Cabeza Pullés et al, 2013;Rupert et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2018), mutually shared cognitions (Vangrieken et al, 2016;Veestraeten et al, 2014), and shared temporal cognitions (Abrantes et al, 2018). Overall, Table 3 illustrates a large and robust correlation between shared cognition and team learning (r = .62, Z = 11.96, p = .00), along with a high percentage of heterogeneity between and within studies (I 2 = 82.85%, τ = 0.21; PI lower = 0.25, PI upper = 0.83), explaining around 38% of variance.…”

The Performance of Gender Diverse Teams: What Is the Relation between Diversity Attitudes and Degree of Diversity?

“…We therefore contend that it is time to go beyond looking at diversity as an asset vs. a liability, and rather focus on a better understanding of what affects the ability of teams to reap the benefits of diversity to perform. In line with this, we here focus on factors that support positive effects of team diversity (Joshi and Roh, ; Rupert et al, ). Specifically, we investigate openness to diversity, as well as its joint effect with team gender composition on team performance.…”

The Role of Interacting Diversities and the Location of Faultlines in Inter-Organizational Teams

“…By following recent studies in the organizational behavior literature (e.g., Hill, Aime, & Ridge, 2017;Stuart, 2017;Swider, Liu, Harris, & Gardner, 2017), we test our theorizing with archival sports data from male national soccer teams. With our study, we contribute to the literature by answering calls for research on the conditions under which faultlines may yield desirable consequences (e.g., Rupert, Blomme, Dragt, & Jehn, 2016;Thatcher & Patel, 2012).…”