Recent years, organisation are much more relay on diversity teams to developing products, making decisions and also gain the business success (When and how), therefore diversity team are becoming a very important element for the organisations. In USA, diversity usually refer to demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and ethnicity, however, diversity is not only refer to demographics, it also means the diversity in psychological characteristics like skills, personality, abilities, and education backgrounds (book diversity). Although team diversity leads to some benefits like the positive organisational cooperation, share the knowledge and experience, it can also leads some problems to the organisation, such as the tension between members
Indeed some research found that the team diversity have positive impact to decision making. For example, one of the research found that the diversity at educational level can positively influence the decision making and also affected on team performance (Simons). In addition, Dooley and Frywell illustrated that the discussion and argument was associated with quality decision making in U.S. hospital. However, some researches also demonstrated that the diversity in the team can have negative influence on decision making. For example, Sounder () found that, in diversity teams, because of the lots of difference between team members, sometimes its difficult to reach an agreement. Although, sometimes diversity in the team can improve the quality of decision making, it also increase the conflict within the team members, and impede the cooperation
In the early research by Gassman (1467), he illustrated that although diversity in the team result language barriers and cultural differences are occurred frequently, some benefits can still be found, for example, open up opportunities. Another experiment in problem solving creativity found that, the team which composed of people have different attitudes and perspectives were much better than the team which composed of people with similar attitudes (Triandis). Although diversity in team members has been shown some advantages for creativity and innovation, there still some research and experiment demonstrated that there are no relationships between team member diversity and team performance or the diversity in team members have negative impact on creativity and innovation. Ochse (1990) illustrated that creativity may be impeded if the team member is quite knowledgeable at their own area. Another study from Diehl (1992), demonstrated that, although team member diversity did increase the team ability of creative ideas, it not mean that diversity teams are outperform homogeneous teams. As these researchers explored, diversity in team members, not only bring positive influence but also the negative
When the diversity in CSE is high in the team, the performance is perceived as higher. The opposite pattern of results emerged for those who belonged to teams with low levels of CSE diversity. Here, there is a negative relationship between individual CSE and peer-rated performance for those who belong to teams with low diversity of CSE. When a person believes that he or she can complete tasks successfully, but is in a team with low levels of team diversity in CSE, then their performance is perceived by others as
Diversity in a team is the best approach to constituting the membership of the team and this should be based on the assessment of the type of team it is i.e. either idea, task, analytical or socially-focused team. This will help to bring on board the right type of skill needed to achieve success. Also conducting individual profiling of members will help to come up with guiding rules and how to manage the team members characters and behaviours (Wright, 2013).
The diversity of an organization’s workforce and taking affirmative steps to attract, develop and retain diverse employees has become an essential component to business success. It is to encourage managers to use all resources when recruiting to enhance the cultural diversity in their work place as “dynamic atmosphere of collaboration”.
Obviously, people differ in numerous ways, so what does that mean for businesses? Well, when work groups are comprised of people with different backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles, promoting teamwork and smooth interactions can be challenging. Finding new ways to work together will require thinking about people’s differences, not to divide, separate or exclude, but to take advantage of those differences. When people engage in divergent thinking, they put themselves in a highly exploratory mode, drawing from more of their total life experience to help solve a particularly difficult problem or to discover new and better alternatives to doing things.
Malcolm ford said that “Diversity: is the art of thinking independently together”[1]. Diversity in teams is vital to achieve effective solution where every team member brings in unique expertise that results in all-inclusive approach for possible solutions. In this process different sets of eyes with unique pair of glasses see the problem and solution differently from one another that creates a wider coverage range. In the article “Putting your whole brain to work”[2] Dorothy Leonard and Susaan Straus discuss about how creative abrasion is necessary for productive results. They talk about how a manager under- stands that different people have different thinking styles: analytical or intuitive, experiential or conceptual, independent or social, logical or values driven. These thinking styles ultimately influence the decision-making abilities of a team. Even though these diverse teams are essential and have many benefits they clearly are prone to dysfunction because of the very reason of their origin i.e. considerable diversity among team members. With all these advantages and limitations of a
For a team to be successful there are several factors that have to be addressed in order for a fluent, functioning group of individuals combined to achieve a certain goal. This goal can be a variety of different endings from producing minor results to making decisions that create a major impact on a large scale. Within a team environment conflict is always presence. Conflict is essential to the advancement of teams and must be managed in a proper way to avoid destruction and division amongst the group of individuals. From sports, to education, and the workplace teamwork is present in everyday life. As a human race we all work in different team oriented situations in order to accomplish a variety of tasks.
The purpose of creating teams is to solve a problem or issue through the use of diverse ideas and solutions. There are many times in life, whether at work or at school that one will encounter a diverse mix of personalities. Workplace diversity is everywhere, from the small corner business to the fortune 500 company, and is one of the most important challenges facing companies today. This mix of diverse personalities, gender, race, experience, and culture is what makes a team successful. This is an example of a heterogeneous team. On the other hand, a team with the same make-up, or homogeneous, has limitations on creativity, viewpoints and ideas. This paper will look at cultural diversity and demographic characteristics, specifically age, gender, expertise/ experience and how each plays an integral part in the construction of a high performance team.
Forming teams to solve specific problems inside of a company is common practice. What impact does the gender-diversity of the team have on its performance? Socialization of gender roles begins at very early ages, with men and women experiencing different socialization processes that result in different patterns of behavior. Girls are commonly taught to respect male authority, to act in a communal fashion, and to resist expressing aggressive or assertive behaviors. Conversely, boys are socialized to be aggressive and competitive. There are certainly modern trends away from these stereotypes, but there is still a common level of perception that the socialized behaviors from childhood persist in the workplace for adults (Karakowsky, McBey & Chuang, 2004). These early patterns of socialization and expectation setting have long-lasting impacts on the behaviors of adult team members.
Group decision making has many benefits for the individuals involved and the organization itself. In order for group decision making to be efficient, it is important for a creative environment to exist. “Creativity is the mental and social process used to generate ideas, concepts and associations that lead to the exploration of new ideas (May, 2011, para.3). This allows each employee to explore ideas and feel comfortable to share them without fear of rejection.
In contemporary organizations, more and more companies tent to plan their employees working in a team (Kocher er al, 2006). In 1995, Osterman found that 54.5%of US American firms work in team (Kocher er al, 2006). The reason of using team working was that they simply have proven to be advantageous for companies (Kocher er al, 2006). In general, team working made better decisions than individuals, and teams often made accepted decisions to larger areas. Therefore, teams have become important tools for identifying high-quality solutions to finding out organizational problems (Kocher er al, 2006). Kocher et al (2006) designed a decision-maker experiment, the beauty-contest game. They found out about 60 ...
The personal style and personalities of each member in a group may be influence their team effectiveness. Individuals will tend to play an important role in a group and depend on their personality and working group style. To improve a team and effectiveness in project or working, each team member need to understand the role of every member in a group. With 3 contemporary theories of team roles to use in our group is:
As the processes and systems used in business have become more complex, teams, not individuals, have become popular in many organizations. Teams are made up of individuals from an organization brought together to solve a problem, improve a process or implement a new process. “A major advantage that a team has over an individual is its diversity of resources and ideas” (Burns, 1995, p. 52). However, this diversity can cause conflict within the team. The success of the team is strongly influenced by the team’s ability to recognize the causes of, manage and resolve conflict.
Many executives and scholars believe that the managing diversity in an organization is an important organizational function. Every organization is approaching to change their work force accordingly competitive globalized market to achieve better outcomes. People are now part of a worldwide economy than ever before. The globalization of business world has influenced much interest in the areas of diversity management among management scholars and experts. An organization needs diversity to become more creative, flexible and open to expanding the globalized market. Hence maximizing and optimizing on workplace diversity has become a essential role for diversity management today. Managers are well aware about managerial skills and multicultural work environment and their impact on the business world. The assay will discuss about diversity in an organization, diversity strategies, demography, and prevailing conditions. Furthermore, the assay will guide readers to understand the theory in practice in the Microsoft organization as an example.
2. The advantages to having diversity on a team are endless. No two people are the same; everyone is from different cultures, background, and ethnicity with all different experiences. Having diversity in a group will almost always benefit the outcome of the project, because of all the different intelligence working together and learning from each other. Having different ideas is a good thing it makes other individuals expand their minds farther than their own thinking process and see things from other points of view, which will expand the individual’s understanding of the projects material. Being able to have a discussion, answer questions and get feedback from different people is not only giving the teachers prospective on our work, but gives us the ability to learn from others as well and hear what they have to say. Although diversity in a group is a positive as a whole, there are still challenges that come with it; challenges such as language barriers can definitely cause frustration in a group. Being from different ethnic backgrounds, and cultures is a great thing but it can also be the most challenging hurdle to overcome, because everyone is different, everyone has a different point of view. Knowing how to be respectful will go a long way in a diverse group.
The world's increasing globalization requires more interaction among people from diverse cultures, beliefs, and backgrounds than ever before. People no longer live and work in an insular marketplace; they are now part of a worldwide economy with competition coming from nearly every continent. For this reason, profit and non-profit organizations need diversity to become more creative and open to change. Maximizing and capitalizing on workplace diversity has become an important issue for management today (UCSF).