Publication

SOTA Review

Diversity in Innovation Teams. SOTA No 8

Published: 22 October 2018

Diversity in the workplace has attracted significant interest in organisations that want to attract and retain talented employees. The increase in functional and demographic diversity of the workforce has led to the question whether diverse teams perform better than homogeneous groups. What is the evidence supporting the ‘value in diversity’ hypothesis? Research surrounding team performance suggests that diverse teams are essential to organisational innovation, creativity and productivity. However, too much diversity can reduce innovation team performance by negatively affecting cohesion, decision-making quality, and members’ commitment to the group – suggesting an inverse U-shaped relationship between diversity and team performance.

Authors
Associated Themes
  • Diversity
  • Innovation
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