Interactions Within Groups and Subgroups: The Effects of Demographic Faultlines

Do Workgroup Faultlines Help or Hurt? A Moderated Model of Faultlines, Team Identification, and Group Performance

“…When multiple demographic attributes align, differences across group members create a partition that may potentially cause a disruption in the group. Such demographic alignments have been shown to produce more direct and pervasive effects on group processes and outcomes than simple dispersion of member differences , Lau and Murnighan 2005, Li and Hambrick 2005. However, there has been less consistency across studies when considering the directional effects of faultlines.…”

“…Following Jehn and her colleagues (Jehn et al , 1999 who have stressed the value in differentiating between types of diversity, we argue that faultlines based on social categories and faultlines based on informational categories may have different implications for workgroups. Although some studies have looked at faultlines formed along social category characteristics (e.g., Earley andMosakowski 2000, Lau andMurnighan 2005) or across a number of various attributes (e.g., Bezrukova et al 2007, Gibson and Vermeulen 2003, Thatcher et al 2003, little is known about how the nature of members' alignments (social category versus informational) may affect performance in diverse workgroups. Social category faultlines are hypothetical dividing lines that split a group into subgroups based on members' alignment on social category demographic characteristics.…”

“…However, there has been less consistency across studies when considering the directional effects of faultlines. Some studies have reported tension and low performance (e.g., Dyck andStarke 1999, Li andHambrick 2005), whereas others have shown increased learning behavior and satisfaction (Gibson andVermeulen 2003, Lau andMurnighan 2005). In summary, the goal of our research is to reconcile some of the controversies around faultlines by: (1) examining the different bases of faultlines (social category and information based), (2) taking into account two different dimensions of faultlines (faultline strength and distance), and (3) considering the effects of potential moderators in developing a more complete moderated model of the effects of faultlines on group performance.…”

How attitude certainty tempers the effects of faultlines in demographically diverse teams

“…Empirical research in the wake of Lau and Murnighan's contribution has partially confirmed the expected negative effects of strong faultlines (Lau and Murnighan 2005;Molleman 2005;Thatcher et al 2003). At the same time, the theory neglects hitherto an important insight from social psychological research on social influence that-as we argue in this paper-might yield new theoretical implications for the effects of faultlines on team cohesion.…”

“…Recent decades saw an increase of both demographic diversity (Lau and Murnighan 2005;Tsui et al 1992;van Knippenberg et al 2004;van Knippenberg and Schippers 2007) and reliance on work teams (Jehn et al 1999;Lau and Murnighan 1998;Milliken and Martins 1996) in organizations. The co-occurrence of these trends fostered researchers' interest in how diversity affects team processes and performance (Williams and Meân 2004;Williams and O'Reilly 1998).…”