The Interplay of Diversity Training and Diversity Beliefs on Team Creativity in Nationality Diverse Teams

A C Homan, C Bungeler, R A Eckhoff, Wendy Ginkel, S Volpel

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

78 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1456-1467
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Applied Psychology
Volume100
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2015

Research programs

  • RSM ORG

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