Stahl Günter K, Maznevski Martha L
Institute for International Business, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Welthandelsplatz 1, 1020 Vienna, Austria.
Ivey Business School, Western University, 1255 Western Road, London, ON N6G 0N1 Canada.
J Int Bus Stud. 2021;52(1):4-22. doi: 10.1057/s41267-020-00389-9. Epub 2021 Jan 18.
Our 2010 article, "Unraveling the Effects of Cultural Diversity in Teams: A Meta-analysis of Research on Multicultural Work Groups," attempted to take stock of existing research on cultural diversity in teams, to reconcile conflicting perspectives and past results, and provide a better understanding of the mechanisms and boundary conditions under which diversity affects team outcomes. To guide our analysis, we developed a theoretical framework outlining how cultural diversity leads to both process gains and losses in teams, and specifying the contextual conditions under which diversity contributes to effective team outcomes. We tested our hypotheses in a meta-analysis of research on cultural diversity in teams, encompassing 108 primary studies with a combined sample size of 10,632 work groups. The results suggested that cultural diversity does not have a direct impact on team performance but rather that the effect is indirect, mediated by process variables such as creativity, cohesion, and conflict; and is moderated by contextual influences such as team tenure, the complexity of the task, and whether the team is co-located or geographically dispersed. Unexpected findings raised important questions about the dynamics of diverse teams and underscored the need for further examination. In this Retrospective, we reflect on progress made in research on culturally diverse teams over the last decade, highlight remaining gaps and open questions, and propose an agenda for future research.
我们2010年发表的文章《剖析团队中文化多样性的影响：对多元文化工作团队研究的元分析》试图对团队文化多样性的现有研究进行评估，调和相互冲突的观点和以往的研究结果，并更好地理解多样性影响团队成果的机制和边界条件。为指导我们的分析，我们构建了一个理论框架，概述文化多样性如何导致团队在过程中既有收益也有损失，并明确多样性有助于实现有效团队成果的情境条件。我们在对团队文化多样性研究的元分析中检验了我们的假设，该分析涵盖了108项主要研究，样本总量为10632个工作团队。结果表明，文化多样性对团队绩效没有直接影响，而是具有间接影响，由创造力、凝聚力和冲突等过程变量介导；并且受到团队任期、任务复杂性以及团队是集中办公还是地理分散等情境影响的调节。意外的发现引发了关于多元化团队动态的重要问题，并凸显了进一步研究的必要性。在这篇回顾文章中，我们反思了过去十年在文化多元化团队研究方面取得的进展，强调了仍然存在的差距和未解决的问题，并提出了未来研究的议程。
