PMGM7002 Chap.7 Developing a Global Team: Diversity and Interdependence
Developing a Global Team: Diversity and Interdependence
The inputs a manager controls
The course models teams as inputs, processes and outputs. This chapter covers the inputs: size, roles, norms, personality, ability, diversity and demography. It asks what a team's ability really is and answers that it depends on the task. A disjunctive task depends on the best member, a conjunctive task on the weakest, and an additive task on the average.
Personality works through behaviour, with a weak link drawing help if the cause is ability and anger if it is conscientiousness.
Diversity, weighed rather than praised
Diversity is any difference that might be used to categorise people. Surface-level diversity concerns attributes such as age, sex, race and nationality, and deep-level diversity concerns values, attitudes and personality.
The course reports that diversity overall has no effect or a small negative effect on performance, with gains in dynamic or creative work, and that over time surface effects weaken while deep effects grow.
It also discusses congruence of diversity across management levels.
Four kinds of multicultural group
Groups can be homogeneous, token, bicultural or multicultural, and each brings its own risk, from a highly visible lone member in a token group to a two-camp faultline in a bicultural one.
The course's three practices for managing diversity are open discussion of backgrounds, removing forms of dominance that block contribution, and resolving tensions quickly.
How the task links members
Interdependence runs through goals, outcomes and tasks. Task interdependence can be pooled, sequential, reciprocal or comprehensive.
The course's central finding is that teams do best when tasks and outcomes are both group-based or both individual, and poorly when the two are mixed. The chapter's counter-example shows a team whose conflict looked cultural but began with that kind of mixed design.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Inputs, processes and outputs
- 02
What counts as a team's ability
- 03
Personality and the weakest link
- 04
Surface and deep-level diversity
- 05
How diversity effects change over time
- 06
Four types of multicultural group
- 07
Goal, outcome and task interdependence
- 08
Why hybrid designs underperform
Worked example · free
Repair a token team with a mixed design
- 2Classify the group by its cultural composition and name its risk.
- 3Classify the task and outcome interdependence and name the design flaw.
- 2Recommend structural fixes before any cultural intervention.
Key terms
- IPO Model
- A model of teams in which inputs such as composition shape processes such as teamwork, which produce outputs such as performance.
- Conjunctive Task
- A task on which the team's performance depends on its weakest member.
- Deep-level Diversity
- Differences among members in values, attitudes and personality, whose effect on a team grows over time.
- Faultline
- A division within a team along a salient attribute that splits members into subgroups.
- Token Group
- A group in which all members but one share the same background.
- Reciprocal Interdependence
- A task structure in which work passes back and forth among members rather than in one direction.
- Outcome Interdependence
- The degree to which team members share the rewards or consequences of the team's performance.
Developing a Global Team: Diversity and Interdependence FAQ
Does cultural diversity make teams perform better?
Not automatically. The course reports that diversity tends to have no effect or a minimal negative effect on team performance overall, with positive effects found in dynamic or creative jobs. Different worldviews can widen the information a team uses, but diversity can also create faultlines, so whether it helps depends on the work and on how it is managed.
What is the difference between surface and deep-level diversity?
Surface-level diversity concerns visible attributes such as age, sex, race, ethnicity and nationality. Deep-level diversity concerns values, attitudes and personality. The course notes that as people work together the effect of surface differences weakens and the effect of deep differences grows, so problems that emerge late in a project are usually about beliefs rather than appearances.
Should team members be rewarded individually or together?
It depends on how the work is organised. The course reports that teams perform best when tasks and rewards are both purely group-based or both purely individual. A design that splits the work into separate pieces but pays one shared bonus, or the reverse, tends to perform poorly, so match the reward to the task.
Assessment move
Think of the last group assignment you did and classify it three ways: the type of task for ability, the type of task interdependence, and whether the reward was individual or shared. If the last two did not match, write down what friction followed. That single exercise covers most of what this chapter asks you to apply.
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