The Performance of Gender Diverse Teams: What Is the Relation between Diversity Attitudes and Degree of Diversity?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12164
• Date: 01 June 2019
• Published date: 01 June 2019
• Author: Florence Villesèche,Jakob Lauring

The Performance of Gender Diverse Teams:

What Is the Relation between Diversity

Attitudes and Degree of Diversity?

JAKOB LAURING

1

and FLORENCE VILLESÈCHE

2

1

Department of BusinessAdministration, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

2

Department of International Economics and Management, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

While gender diversity is slowly becoming an expected characteristic of teams, both academics and practitioners

still need to better understand the relation between contextual characteristics and team composition for the

performance of gender diverse teams. In this article, we investigate the relationship between diversity attitudes and

the performanceof gender diverse teams, and further,we show how numerical team gendercomposition is a key link

in this relationship. Based on surveyresponses from 1,085academic team leaders, we showthat openness to diversity

is strongly associated with team performance. We also find a moderating effect of the degree of genderdiversity, so

that the effect of openness to diversity, as positive team level diversity attitudes, is stronger when team gender

composition converges towards numerical balance. These findings bridge critical mass theory and diversity and

performance scholarship by establishing the joint effect of compositional and contextual characteristics on the

performance of gender diverse teams.

Keywords: openness to diversity; critical mass theory; gender; diversity; teams; gender distribution; team

performance

Introduction

A growing literature is theorizing about the relationship

between diversity and performance. Based on the

information/decision-making perspective, academic

literature has argued for positive effects of diversity on

performance (Williams and O’Reilly, 1998). Competitive

advantages can be derived from the expected variance of

knowledge and perspectives accruing from diversity

(Herring, 2009; Stahl et al., 2010a). However, drawing on

the similarity-attraction paradigm, other research suggests

that diversity can come with trade-offs such as reduced

and restrained communication and coordination (van

Knippenberg et al., 2004). This research finds that group

members holding or perceived to be holding similar values

will have more frequent and deeper communication which

helps reduce conflicts and increase efficient use of

knowledge (Tsui and O’Reilly, 1989; Mitchell et al., 2009).

The effect of similarity on group member interaction

has been arguedto be particularly strong regardinggender

(Thibaut and Kelley, 1959; Graves and Powell, 1995).

This strong effect of gender can be explained by

identity-based social and structural mechanisms, in

particular social categorization (Mehra et al., 1998;

Mollica et al., 2003; van Knippenberg et al., 2004). Social

categorizationtakes place when a phenotypical,or visible,

diversity such as gender will, for example, leadwomen to

be perceived as a distinct group with distinct traits and

values (regardless of whether they actually are distinct).

Yet, meta-analyses across perspectives lead to no

conclusive results (see for example Joshi and Roh,

2009), or point to the decisive influence of other factors

such as cultural context (Schneid et al., 2015). In

consequence, it appears necessary to put restraint on

trying to document and explain a main effect of (gender)

diversity on team performance (Hobman et al., 2004;

van Knippenberg and Schippers, 2007; McKay et al.,

2009). Instead, we need to investigate contextual

characteristics (Wegge et al., 2008; Joshi and Roh,

2009; Olsen and Martins, 2012).

Moreover, notwithstanding slow progress, teams are

progressively becoming diverse, in particular with regard

to gender (cf . Dwyer et al., 2003; Muzio and Tomlinson,

2012; Hoogendoorn et al., 2013). Diversity is thus

Correspondence: Florence Villesèche, Department of International

Economicsand Management, CopenhagenBusiness School,Copenhagen,

Denmark,Tel+45 38 15 42 68. E-mail fv.int@cbs.dk

European Management Review, Vol. 16, 243–254, (2019)

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12164

©2017 European Academy of Management