Openness to Language and Value Diversity Fosters Multicultural Team Creativity and Performance

Multicultural teams are increasingly employed by organizations as a way to achieve international coordination, particularly when creativity and innovation are desired. Unfortunately, studies often fail to demonstrate the purported benefits associated with these teams, reporting difficulties with communication and social integration, inhibiting creativity and performance. A survey-based study of multicultural academic teams (n = 1085) demonstrates that teams that are open to language diversity are more creative and perform better. We observe that performance is enhanced even further when teams are also open to value diversity. We conclude that multicultural teams are in want of a climate that is welcoming to both linguistic and cultural differences and suggest implications for theory and practice.