It's about the process, not the product: A meta-analytic investigation of team demographic diversity and processes

To better understand the effects of demographic diversity on teams, we conducted a meta-analytic investigation of the relationship between team demographic diversity and team processes. Drawing from the categorization-elaboration model, we hypothesized that team demographic diversity elicits opposing effects on team performance via information elaboration and social categorization processes. We also explored several team-level and contextual moderators on these relationships. In our meta-analysis of 406 effects from 38,304 teams, we found that team demographic diversity is related to increased social categorization processes, but we did not find support for a relationship between team demographic diversity and information elaboration. In addition, we identified team education level and occupational and industry context as moderators of these relationships, finding stronger support for moderators of the relationship between diversity and social categorization than the relationship between diversity and information elaboration. We discuss implications of our findings for research and practice. We summarize previous work on how demographic diversity (i.e., age, gender, race/ethnicity, and nationality diversity) affect how teams work together. We analyzed data from multiple studies and explored the relationship between team demographic diversity and team processes. We also examined various factors that may influence these relationships, including team characteristics and features of a team's context. We found evidence supporting a positive relationship between team demographic diversity and social categorization processes. However, we did not find any support for a relationship between team demographic diversity and information elaboration. We also discovered that team education level, as well as occupational and industry context, impacted the strength of these relationships. Notably, the relationship between diversity and social categorization was more strongly influenced than the relationship between diversity and information elaboration. Our findings have important implications for future research and practical applications in team settings.