Author Abstract
Teaming across expertise boundaries, within and across organizations, is an increasingly popular strategy for innovation. Although membership diversity expands the range of perspectives that teams can draw upon to innovate, meta-analyses of the team-diversity literature have found weak or inconsistent support for that assumption. These studies also have typically examined effects of team diversity in relatively stable bounded teams, rather than in newly formed temporary groups. Drawing from two streams of research to unpack team diversity, this paper seeks to describe the complexity of cross-boundary teaming, while highlighting factors that may be central to its effectiveness. Past research on team diversity suggests numerous moderators that affect the diversity-performance relationship in teams, while research on knowledge and practice explores the situated activities and logics of diverse experts in great depth. Both streams thus shed light on team diversity, offering complementary insights. We develop a model of cross-boundary teaming that marries these streams and offers human resource management researchers and professional insights and approaches for helping diverse teams tackle complex problems.
Paper Information
- Full Working Paper Text
- Working Paper Publication Date: August 2016
- HBS Working Paper Number: HBS Working Paper #17-013
- Faculty Unit(s): Technology and Operations Management
