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We examine interpersonal congruence, the degree to which group members see others in the group as others see themselves, as a moderator of the relationship between diversity and group effectiveness. A longitudinal study of 83 work groups revealed that diversity tended to improve creative task performance in groups with high interpersonal congruence, whereas diversity undermined the performance of groups with low interpersonal congruence. This interaction effect also emerged on measures of social integration, group identification, and relationship conflict. By eliciting self-verifying appraisals, members of some groups achieved enough interpersonal congruence during their first ten minutes of interaction to benefit their group outcomes four months later. In contrast to theories of social categorization, the interpersonal congruence approach suggests that group members can achieve harmonious and effective work processes by expressing rather than suppressing the characteristics that make them unique.* Diversity has recently captured the attention of those interested in group performance. Group members can differ in functional specialization and demographic or cultural identities, such as age, race, sex, and citizenship (e.g., Pfeffer, 1983; Milliken and Martins, 1996; Jehn, Northcraft, and Neale, 1999; Chatman and Flynn, 2001), and a group's diversity is defined by the heterogeneity of all such individual attributes within a group (Blau, 1977; Williams and O'Reilly, 1998). Proponents of diversity hold that differences among group members give rise to varied ideas, perspectives, knowledge, and skills that can improve their ability to solve problems and accomplish their work. This value-in-diversity hypothesis has received some empirical support (e.g., Watson, Kumar, and Michaelsen, 1993; Jehn, Northcraft, and Neale, 1999; Ely and Thomas, 2001). Skeptics, however, counter that members of different social categories tend to view each other through the biased lens of category stereotypes and that these biases decrease the effectiveness of group interaction (for a review, see Williams and O'Reilly, 1998). Recently, several authors have attempted to reconcile these contrasting viewpoints by suggesting that diversity is a double-edged sword, improving group performance on some tasks but, all too often, disrupting group processes (Guzzo and Dickson, 1996; Milliken and Martins, 1996; Pelled, Eisenhardt, and Xin, 1999). Efforts to capitalize on diversity over the last four decades have met with frustratingly equivocal results (Guzzo and Dickson, 1996). In response, researchers have intensified their efforts to understand why diversity is so often disruptive. To this end, most studies have relied on social identity theory (Tajfel, 1982) or self-categorization theory (Turner et al., 1987) to explain diversity's harmful effects. These theories suggest that greater diversity will cause workgroup members to employ divisive social categorizations based on their demographic or functional differences instead of using the inclusive wo...

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Can groups become effective simply by assembling high-status individual performers? Though an affirmative answer may seem straightforward on the surface, this answer becomes more complicated when group members benefit from collaborating on interdependent tasks. Examining Wall Street sell-side equity research analysts who work in an industry in which individuals strive for status, we find that groups benefited—up to a point—from having high-status members, controlling for individual performance. With higher proportions of individual stars, however, the marginal benefit decreased before the slope of this curvilinear pattern became negative. This curvilinear pattern was especially strong when stars were concentrated in a small number of sectors, likely reflecting suboptimal integration among analysts with similar areas of expertise. Control variables ensured that these effects were not the spurious result of individual performance, department size or specialization, or firm prestige. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results for the literatures on status and groups, along with practical implications for strategic human resource management.