다양성과 팀 성과: 팀 목표의존의 조절효과

Due to the increase of economic activities by women, employment flexibility, task diversity,and globalization, human resources in current enterprises have become increasingly diverse. Workforce diversity is related to enriched perspectives, skills, and insights, which in turn increase the group’s creativity and problem-solving capabilities. In contrast, the process of categorizing similar in-group members and dissimilar out-group members on the basis of similarity and differences between team members causes conflict within group processes. As a result, effective management of diversity has become an essential part of gaining a sustainable competitive advantage through the diverse workforce. Despite long interests in diversity management, it is not clear yet how various types of diversity influence group processes and what effective management is on diversity. Most research on diversity are overly inconsistent. In particular, most studies on workforce diversity are conducted in Western enterprises where sources of workforce diversity are much more diverse than Asian companies in terms of race, nationality, gender orientation, individuality, etc. Moreover, since culture and structure of Asian and Western companies stand apart, questions are raised whether effects of work team diversity are the same in different organizational contexts. Thus, this study explores the effects of various types of diversity in Korean firms and the moderating role of team goal interdependence. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of diversity on team outcomes and moderating effects of perceived team goal interdependence on the diversity-team performance relationship. Based on the literature review, we propose:Hypothesis 1. Age diversity will be negatively related to (a) team satisfaction, (b) team commitment, (c) team cohesion, and positively related to (d) teams creative behavior. Hypothesis 2. Career diversity will be negatively related to (a) team satisfaction, (b) team commitment, (c) team cohesion, and positively related to (d) team creative behavior. Hypothesis 3. Educational background diversity will be negatively related to (a) team satisfaction, (b) team commitment, (c) team cohesion, and positively related to (d) team creative behavior. Hypothesis 4. Values diversity will be negatively related to (a) team satisfaction, (b) team commitment, (c) team cohesion, and (d) team creative behavior. Hypothesis 5. The interaction of team perceived goal interdependence and (a) age diversity, (b) career diversity, (c) educational background diversity, and (d) values diversity will be positively related to team satisfaction. Hypothesis 6. The interaction of team perceived goal interdependence and (a) age diversity, (b) career diversity, (c) educational background diversity, and (d) values diversity will be positively related to team commitment. Hypothesis 7. The interaction of team perceived goal interdependence and (a) age diversity, (b) career diversity, (c) educational background diversity, and (d) values diversity will be positively related to team cohesion. Hypothesis 8. The interaction of team perceived goal interdependence and (a) age diversity, (b) career diversity, (c) educational background diversity, and (d) values diversity will be positively related to team creative behavior. To test the hypotheses, we collected questionnaires from 559 team members from 58 work teams in a Korean conglomerate. Four variables were used to measure team diversity: age, career,educational background, and values. To measure the context effects, perceived goal interdependence was introduced as the moderating variable. Team outcomes included four variables: team commitment,team satisfaction, team cohesion, and team creative behavior. Also, the study controlled two variables that might affect the hypothesized relationships, team size and the length of service of team members. The results of this study indicated that diversity variables were significant predictors of team outcomes: age diversity had a positive effect on teams’ creative behavior, whereas educational diversity had negative effects on team creative behavior and team cohesion and value diversity had negative effects on team satisfaction, team commitment, and team cohesion. Results also indicated that a teams’ perceived interdependence partially moderated the relationships between diversity and team outcomes: educational background diversity on team commitment relationship,value diversity on team commitment relationship, and career diversity on team cohesion relationship. We then developed implications for theory and practice relative to our study outcomes.