Leading diversity: Towards a theory of functional leadership in diverse teams.

Abstract

The importance of leaders as diversity managers is widely acknowledged. However, a dynamic and comprehensive theory on the interplay between team diversity and team leadership is missing. We provide a review of the extant (scattered) research on the interplay between team diversity and team leadership, which reveals critical shortcomings in the current scholarly understanding. This calls for an integrative theoretical account of functional diversity leadership in teams. Here we outline such an integrative theory. We propose that functional diversity leadership requires (a) knowledge of the favorable and unfavorable processes that can be instigated by diversity, (b) mastery of task-and person-focused leadership behaviors necessary to address associated team needs, and (c) competencies to predict and/or diagnose team needs and to apply corresponding leadership behaviors to address those needs. We integrate findings of existing studies on the interplay between leadership and team diversity with insights from separate literatures on team diversity and (team) leadership. The resulting Leading Diversity model (LeaD) posits that effective leadership of diverse teams requires proactive as well as reactive attention to teams' needs in terms of informational versus intergroup processes and adequate management of these processes through task-versus person-focused leadership. LeaD offers new insights into specific competencies and actions that allow leaders to shape the influence of team diversity on team outcomes and, thereby, harvest the potential value in diversity. Organizations can capitalize on this model to promote optimal processes and performance in diverse teams.

Sixty years of discrimination and diversity research in human resource management: A review with suggestions for future research directions

“…Although the majority of research published in Human Resource Management is conducted in the United States, approximately 1/3 of the studies in Human Resource Management report on the experiences of employees in at least one country outside of the United States. Researchers identify cultural differences in gender roles (Cooke & Xiao, 2014; Kaminski & Paiz, 1984), work versus family values (Cooke & Xiao, 2014; Olson et al, 2013), reactions to diverse leaders (Kaminski & Paiz, 1984; Woodhams, Lupton, et al, 2015; Carney & O'Kelly, 1987; Tung, 2008), and perceptions of performance appraisal fairness (Yamazaki & Yoon, 2016). Due to these cultural differences, and the conceptualization of diversity as separation, researchers argue that it is even more important to have leadership teams composed of diverse individuals (Muethel et al, 2012) with international experience (Bano & Nadeem, 2018).…”

Strategic Diversity Leadership: The Role of Senior Leaders in Delivering the Diversity Dividend

“…A wide range of individual factors likely affect how senior leaders conceptualize diversity and its role within the organization. Cannella and Monroe (1997: 220) stated that “at the most basic level, strategic leadership theory contends that top managers’ values, cognitions, and personalities affect their field of vision, their selective perception of information, and their interpretation of information.” Prior research (Groysberg & Connolly, 2013; Homan et al, 2020; Randel et al, 2018) suggests a range of individual characteristics and experiences that may affect senior leaders’ development of a nuanced approach to SDL. For example, Olsen and Martins (2016) found that Whites who had grown up in predominantly minority areas support diversity programs more than those who grew up in predominantly White areas; extending such findings to examine how the backgrounds of senior leaders affect their SDL could lead to interesting new research insights.…”

“…The extant literature on diversity and inclusion provides useful guidance to leaders on how they can increase diversity and how they could design and manage teams and organizations to enhance inclusion. Additional guidance on requisite leader attitudes and behaviors is provided by research that has directly focused on the role of leadership in shaping the dynamics of diversity (Homan, Gündemir, Buengeler, & van Kleef, 2020; Randel et al, 2018). However, academic research on diversity leadership is relatively silent on a critical aspect of leadership that exerts powerful influences on individual, team, and organizational outcomes: strategic leadership .…”

“…Based on the research on strategic leadership, I define strategic diversity leadership (SDL) as the shaping of the meaning of diversity within an organization by the organization’s senior leaders . It is differentiated from supervisory diversity leadership , which has been the focus of much of the research on diversity leadership (see reviews by Homan et al, 2020; Randel et al, 2018), by its focus on senior leaders and on shaping the meaning of diversity for the whole organization. Its focus on meaning-making also differentiates it from diversity management , defined as “the voluntary organizational actions that are designed to create greater inclusion of employees from various backgrounds into the formal and informal organizational structures through deliberate policies and programs” (Mor Barak, 2014: 218).…”

From the (new) editors

“…Typically, theory and meta-analyses synthesize topical knowledge. For instance, a forthcoming theory on the leadership of team diversity integrates knowledge coming from empirical work on team diversity and team leadership (Homan et al, in press). Yet substantive topics are not the only bases for synthesizing knowledge.…”