Setting the Stage for Success: How Participation Diversity Can Help Teams Leverage Racioethnic Diversity

Abstract

Though we know racioethnic diversity can impact team functioning, much remains unclear about when and how it affects performance. Extending dyadic theory on interracial interactions, we develop and test predictions about how participation diversity (i.e., the distribution of team member temporal involvement in task functions) influences the racioethnic diversity–performance relationship. We theorize that racioethnic diversity is motivational, prompting self-enhancement goals that are best achieved via cooperation, but are impeded by anxiety that often accompanies racioethnic dissimilarity. Heightened participation diversity provides structure (by clarifying behavioral scripts) that should reduce interracial anxiety, thereby resulting in positive effects of racioethnic diversity on performance through cooperation. Such performance benefits of racioethnic diversity are lower in likelihood in less structured interracial, work-related encounters. Results from a field study and two archival datasets indicated that when there are more clearly differentiated temporal roles, greater racioethnic diversity corresponded with higher performance. Cooperation helped to account for this relationship, as greater differentiation facilitated the positive effect of racioethnic diversity on cooperation, thereby enhancing team performance. This relationship is significantly smaller or nonsignificant when participation diversity is lower. Collectively, our theory and results help to reconcile prior inconsistent effects of racioethnic diversity on team performance.