Perceived Diversity and Team Functioning

A review of perceived diversity in teams: Does how members perceive their team's composition affect team processes and outcomes?

“…If team members saw value in diversity, perceived heterogeneity led to more identification (Study 1), whereas it lead to less identification if team members did not see value in diversity (Study 2). In a similar vein, Hentschel et al (2013) found that perceived heterogeneity was positively related with relationship conflict and negatively with identification, but that these relationships were also moderated by diversity beliefs, such that prodiversity beliefs attenuated the relationships.…”

“…Specifically, several researchers have emphasized the role of attitudes towards diversity in moderating the impact of perceived diversity. For example, both van Dick et al (2008) and Hentschel et al (2013) found that prodiversity beliefs may enhance the positive impact or attenuate the negative impact of perceived heterogeneity, and Hobman et al (2003Hobman et al ( , 2004 pointed at the central role of openness to diversity as a moderating factor of the effect of perceived self-to-team dissimilarity. Others have indicated that the nature of the team and the nature of the task may be also relevant moderating factors.…”

“…Previous research has shown that diversity perceptions are not reliably linked with objective differences (cf. Allen, Dawson, Wheatley, & White, 2008;Cunningham, 2007;Harrison et al, 2002;Hentschel et al, 2013), thus emphasizing the need to examine individual, team, and organizational characteristics as possible antecedents of diversity perceptions. A first set of findings-related to perceived self-to-team dissimilarity-points to factors that influence group members' need or willingness to categorize themselves as different from the others in the group.…”

“…An examination of the methods used and justifications provided by authors in this final group reveals that the authors attribute their choice of focusing on perceived diversity to its superiority over objective diversity (Avery et al, 2007;Hentschel et al, 2013;Hobman et al, 2004;Williams et al, 2007). For example, it was argued that while objective assessment of diversity can fail to incorporate all components of differences that may be relevant to a group at a certain point in time, perceived diversity measures capitalize on the intricate and multidimensional nature of diversity and avoid the need to presuppose that certain dimensions of differences are indeed relevant to the specific unit, context, or culture (Allen et al, 2008;Hobman et al, 2004;.…”

The communality-bonus effect for male transformational leaders – leadership style, gender, and promotability

“…Therefore, we had to exclude several participants in Study 1b who did not perceive the leadership styles as intended in the manipulations. Considering people's perceptions on workplace issues has at times been found to be more relevant than objective realities in shaping workplace outcomes (Hentschel, Shemla, Wegge, & Kearney, 2013).…”