| Organizations increasingly turn to team-based ways of organizing the work. An important reason to do this is the expectation that by combining the inputs of the different members of the team, teams may achieve a synergy that will lead to better, more creative and innovative outcomes (e.g., solutions to problems, decisions, new products). Team diversity in functional background as well as in demographic background is seen as key in this respect it is the diversity of information, expertise, and perspectives that should lead to creative synergy. The available evidence concerning the relationship between diversity and creativity is scarce and mixed however, and does not suggest a straightforward relationship between diversity and creativity. To address this important issue, the present project develops and extends a recently proposed model of diversity and performance, the Categorization-Elaboration Model (van Knippenberg, De Dreu, & Homan, 2004) to identify and understand the processes and contingencies involved in achieving creative synergy. These team processes are studied in a series of controlled laboratory experiments complemented by one or more surveys of teams in organizations. |
