Cultural Diversity and Team Performance

Sander Hoogendoorn, Mirjam Van Praag

    Publikation: Working paperForskning

    354 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstrakt

    One of the most salient and relevant dimensions of team heterogeneity is cultural background. We measure the impact of cultural diversity on the performance of business teams using a field experiment. Companies are set up by teams of undergraduate students in business studies in realistic though similar circumstances. We vary the cultural composition of otherwise randomly composed teams in a multi-cultural student population. Our data indicate that a moderate level of cultural diversity has no effect on team performance in terms of business outcomes (sales, profits and profits per share). However, if at least the majority of team members is culturally diverse then more cultural diversity seems to affect the performance of teams positively. Our data suggest that this might be related to the more diverse pool of relevant knowledge
    facilitating (mutual) learning within culturally diverse teams.
    OriginalsprogEngelsk
    UdgivelsesstedFrederiksberg
    UdgiverCopenhagen Business School [wp]
    Antal sider31
    StatusUdgivet - 2015

    Emneord

    • Cultural diversity
    • Ethnic diversity
    • Team performance
    • Field experiment
    • Entrepreneurship
    • (Mutual) learning

    Citationsformater