Understanding Diversity
Datum: oktober 2007
Auteurs: prof. dr. D.L. van Knippenberg
Nederlandse samenvatting
'Understanding Diversity' gaat in op de effecten van de diversiteit van een groep op groepsprestaties. Hoe een groep is samengesteld beïnvloedt de prestaties en kan met een model in kaart worden gebracht. De effecten van groepsdiversiteit op groepsprestaties kunnen beschreven worden in twee verschillende processen die onafhankelijke maar ook interactieve effecten hebben.
De belangrijkste vraag in diversiteitsonderzoek is hoe verschillen tussen groepsleden invloed uitoefenen op groepsprocessen en -prestaties. Meer dan vijftig jaar onderzoek naar diversiteit heeft duidelijk gemaakt dat diversiteit zowel positieve als negatieve effecten kan hebben op prestaties. Onderzoek en praktijk worstelen echter nog steeds met het formuleren van modellen die de uiteenlopende effecten van diversiteit kunnen verklaren en een leidraad kunnen bieden voor het management van diversiteit. Het Categorisatie-Elaboratie Model (CEM) richt zich op dit probleem. Het CEM stelt dat de effecten van werkgroepdiversiteit op groepsprestaties begrepen kunnen worden vanuit twee processen die onafhankelijk en interactief invloed uitoefenen: elaboratie van taakrelevante informatie en sociale categorisatie.
Diversiteit heeft positieve effecten op prestaties voor zover het tot elaboratie leidt. Elaboratie is de uitwisseling en verwerking van informatie. Tegelijkertijd kan diversiteit schadelijk zijn voor prestaties voor zover het leidt tot ‘wij-zij’-tegenstellingen (sociale categorisatie) en een negatieve houding ten opzichte van andere groepen. In het bijzonder omdat deze negatieve houding elaboratie-processen verstoort. Het CEM identificeert ook factoren waar het optreden van elaboratie- en sociale categorisatie-processen van afhankelijk zijn. Deze factoren kunnen duidelijke invalshoeken voor diversiteits-management bieden om groepen samen te stellen. Zo kan er een goede balans worden gevonden in overeenkomsten en verschillen tussen mensen. Groepsleden moeten immers niet alleen verschillen hebben, maar ook overeenkomsten. Tevens dient men te investeren in de ontwikkeling van het vermogen om het perspectief van iemand met een andere functionele, culturele, of … achtergrond te begrijpen. Mensen moeten leren begrijpen hoe een groepslid met een andere achtergrond tegen het werk aankijkt. In leiderschap en cultuur dient te worden uitgedragen dat er meerwaarde in diversiteit zit, en dat diversiteit als een bonus en niet als een probleem moet worden beschouwd.
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Content
A key advantage of groups over single individuals is that group performance may benefit from the diversity of perspectives, knowledge and expertise that different individuals may bring to the scene. Indeed, work is often organized in team-based ways to allow organizations to benefit from the diversity of backgrounds of its members. Understanding and managing the effects of work group diversity poses a great challenge to research and practice in organizational behaviour.
This is the main subject of this research: work group diversity and its effects on the performance of work groups and teams in organizations. Clearly, work group diversity is an issue that is central to organizational behaviour.
Work Group Diversity: A brief review of the field
The concept of diversity refers to a characteristic of a group or organization. First, diversity is a group characteristic, not an individual characteristic. Diversity deals with how differences between group members affect group functioning, not with how being different from others affects individual functioning. Second, the study of diversity is not about explaining differences between different organizational groups. It is about explaining how the extent to which there are differences between members of a group affect group functioning. Third, issues of diversity are at least as much about subjective differences as they are about objective differences. To a large extent, the differences people believe exist between group members are as important in causing the effects of diversity as the differences that may exist in terms of more objective standards. No matter which dimension of diversity is studied, however, the key question in diversity research has always been how differences between work group members affect group process and performance.
In short, the basic prediction of the social categorization perspective in diversity research is that diversity is bad for group performance. In sharp contrast, the basic prediction of the information/decision making perspective is that diversity is good for group performance.
The Social Categorization Perspective
The social categorization perspective thus proposes that in diverse groups, differences between group members may lead group members to distinguish subgroups within the work group – differentiating an ingroup of people similar to self from an outgroup of others that are different from self – in a very real sense differentiating “us” and “them.” The social categorization perspective in diversity research therefore predicts that diversity disrupts group process because group members are less prone to like, trust, and cooperate with dissimilar others.
The Information/Decision Making Perspective
The information/decision making perspective arrives at a quite different prediction. In short, using their diversity as an informational resource, diverse groups may outperform more homogeneous groups.
Where is the evidence
Plain and simple, neither the social categorization perspective nor the information/decision making perspective is reliably supported in empirical research. The positive effects of diversity that are caused by the integration of diverse informational resources would be tied to dimensions of diversity that are typically associated with differences in knowledge and expertise, such as diversity in educational and functional background. The notion that this would explain the inconsistent findings in diversity research seems to be widely shared. A first thing to realize is that any dimension of diversity may be associated with meaningful differences in task-relevant information and perspectives. In short, all dimensions of diversity may elicit the effects described in the social categorization perspective. And all dimensions of diversity may elicit the effects described in the information/decision making perspective.
The CEM of group diversity and performance
In proposing the CEM, the authors did not discard the social categorization and information/decision making perspectives. Moreover, to account for the effects of diversity, it is not possible to treat the social categorization perspective and the information/decision making perspective as separate perspectives. The observation that lies at the heart of the CEM is that work groups are information processing systems. To arrive at task outcomes, group members exchange, process, and integrate parts of the information and knowledge available to them. This process is called elaboration of task-relevant information. To a certain extent, information elaboration is central to the performance of all task groups.
In short, groups need to engage in information elaboration to use the informational resource provided by the group’s diversity. Only to the extent that groups engage in elaboration of task-relevant information and perspectives will they be able to harvest the potential benefits of their diversity.
Until this research, diversity research did not really incorporate measures of group information processing. The importance of the proposition that elaboration is the key process underlying the positive effects of diversity lies in the fact that it suggest that to understand how to realize the positive effects of diversity, variables should be identified that may render information elaboration in diverse groups more likely.
Stimulating Information Elaboration
Clearly then, diversity as an informational resource may make more of a difference in group performance for complex, non routine tasks than for simple, routine tasks. Information elaboration is an effortful process. It takes time and energy to exchange and integrate diversity of information and perspectives. The same should hold for groups as information processors. Diverse groups with more motivated and more able members should be more likely to harvest the benefits of their diversity. Previous researches proved that accountable groups engaged in more elaboration of information and reached higher-quality decisions. In short, they made better use of their diversity of information than less motivated groups. This implies that an important aspect of managing work group diversity is managing group motivation.
When group members are biased against fellow group members because they are different from them, this lowers the willingness to share information. A key element in the management of information elaboration in diverse groups thus is the management of social categorization processes. The social categorization perspective in its most-invoked form does not hold in diversity research. Therefore, to understand the role of social categorization in information elaboration in diverse groups, a better understanding is needed of social categorization processes in diverse groups..
Refining Our View of Social Categorization Processes
The CEM provides this better understanding in two ways. First, by suggesting a more complex relationship between diversity and social categorization. Second, by proposing that social categorization per se should not be equated with disruptive intergroup processes.
The CEM of work group diversity and group performance
How to prevent inter group biases? The CEM suggests that there are basically two ways to do so. Prevent social categorization from occurring, or prevent the translation of social categorization into inter group bias. Research on fault lines suggest that the former may be aided by carefully composing teams to let different dimensions of diversity cross-cut each other. In other cases there will be insufficient opportunity to take fault lines into account when composing the team or bringing new members into the team. From a more applied point of view, it thus might make more sense to take salient differences as a given.
Diversity Beliefs
The social categorization perspective recognizes that people may hold biases against dissimilar others that may inform responses to diversity. Diversity research thus has acknowledged the role of beliefs about different others. It has paid far less attention to the potential influence of the beliefs that individuals may hold about diversity itself. Based on stereotypes, prior experience, and a host of other factors, people may hold beliefs about the effects of diversity on work group functioning. Such beliefs are called diversity beliefs – beliefs about the value of diversity to work group functioning. When people believe that diversity has benefits for group performance they may value diverse groups more than homogeneous groups. We propose that if group members believe in the value of diversity, they are more likely to positively engage with diversity to realize its benefits. In contrast, if group members believe that diversity is a burden, responses to a diverse group will be less positive. In other words- diversity beliefs affect group members’ responses to salient differences within their group. If group members believe in the value of diversity, diversity is less likely to elicit intergroup biases, and more likely to lead to elaboration, than when group members believe diversity is problematic.
Conclusion
To understand and manage the effects of diversity, one should not forget that these are group processes we are trying to manage. and the contingencies of these processes. First and foremost, to harvest the benefits of diversity the elaboration of task-relevant information must be stimulated. In this respect, it is essential that salient differences to engender intergroup biases should be prevented. While several factors are important in this respect, one of the more important one’s is group members’ understanding of diversity. Management scholars are not the only ones thinking about diversity. People in diverse groups do to, and what they believe makes a difference.