Team Diversity in relation to Performance - Literature review Example

Running Head: DIVERSITY Diversity Name Institution Date Team diversity in relation to performance Introduction Diversity is not based only on, race, sex, sexual behavior, religion, age, size amongst other aspects of life; but the uniqueness of each and every person whether quite or talkative, interested in arts or interested in scientific studies and the rest of the sort (Mathieu & Zajac, 1990). It is very necessary that all leaders of social organizations and institutions try to make their members learn that working as a team is a way of achieving the best in performance because each person is unique thus there is need to rely on each team member despite the differences they possess in one way or another; there is always a lesson to learn from another person (Audley, 1998). If people do not understand each other and major on the negatives of others instead of depending on what they possess to learn and improve, then performance is bound to be affected greatly due to conflicts that arise from these differences. There have been diverse opinions on whether team diversity improves performance or it makes it worse. This paper tends to examine to what extent team diversity affects performance and how (Nadler, 1984). Necessity for Diversity Acceptance When looking at diversity, it should be seen as a tool to strengthen individuals in a given organization or institution. If all employees major upon each other’s strengths then performance shoots higher every moment (Footer & Christoph, 2000). Diversity becomes valuable when each person understands values and utilizes the uniqueness in every counterpart. Managers or heads need to help their members grow from mare groups into essential teams. There exist an enormous disparity between a group and a team (Mathieu, & Zajac, 1990). A group is made up of individuals working towards self-centered gains while a team constitutes of people who have come together to work towards achieving a similar goal. One person working alone can perform well but a team can lead to a tremendous performance reason being that people working together to meet the same goal help each other because they have one focus in union. Team work in institutions offer a great competition to others working as individuals (Hyun-kyung, 2000). There is one major reason as to why groups fail to succeed, which is failing to understand and accept other members for what they are made of. The group can only become a perfect team when every member discovers that one member’s strength can turn other members’ weaknesses into great strength and failure to which the group will never meet the particular goals (Mathieu, & Zajac, 1990). Accepting diversity is the major point in order to build teams. There are several team building theories and each of them states that to have a good team, there must be members with different attributes in the group and avoid choosing people who have great similarities. Being diverse is bringing together people with different life experiences, from different cultural backgrounds because they will obviously have different views on the set backs and that is what a good team requires (Kakabadse, 1995). Developing diversity The development of diversity falls under soft skills which are often hard to appraise unlike hard skills which are tangible and easy to sum up performance. In order to get the best performance from its members, every institution must learn come up with programs to inform them about working as a team to bring out good results. The effectiveness of this program is seen from the results in performance there after (Kakabadse, 1995). Team training has three major attributes: First is Training which is a tool of improving the current work by one being able to perform as a member of a team, the other one is Education which is important in improving performance in a separate job, the member graduates from a group member to a team member and lastly is Development which helps members to accommodate new points of view so that the institution or organization turns out to be more competitive (Horwitz, 2005). Reasons why diversity acceptance is a challenge When a person is born, there are those things that become deep rooted in oneself in the process of growing up and they result to what is referred to as chauvinism. This develops as one learns about the surrounding and oneself. There are so many things that expose one to what is right and what is wrong from relatives, age mates, friends, teachers, literature to religion just to mention but a few. These are the things create how one views things and issues and the behavior and action one brings out towards them (Emmanuel, 2003). Ones roots affect so much the embracing of new things like information and surrounding. It is very dangerous to have fixed views on which people are capable because one can never accept other people unless otherwise. In other words, one should never prejudge others without giving them a chance to show case powerful side (Knight, 1999). There have been various ways invented to try and clear these biases that human beings possess like giving of classes on diversity and programs of diversity development. Over the years, these have only assisted in informing people about the biases so they can consciously decide to change. This is something that requires great commitment by particular members of an institution or organization of whichever kind (Horwitz, 2005). Diversity is not only understanding and accepting what makes up other people but it means: creating a cordial environment where all members of that particular community can seek any sot of assistance without overlooking the people who need to be helped and terming them as weaklings because good tem work is linking strengths and weaknesses to meet the targeted goals, involving each member in making of decisions and finding of solutions to problems and also searching for additional information aggressively from various people of multicultural origins, Inviting people with different qualifications in non-official meetings and creating a team environment where every member acquires a sense of belonging (Riketta, 2002). Linking Team Diversity and performance A PHD candidate in organizational behavior based in ISEAD named Fabrice Cavarretta came up with three major arguments in relation to team diversity and performance. First, he said that it would be very unsafe to have extremely diverse teams because he predicts that they would cause what he calls a social hazard (Baeker, 2000). He says that if the members of a team do not understand each then they fail to get along well resulting to a conflict which leads to poor performance and at the same time if the team learns to get along then great performance is achieved. On the other hand, he continues to say that a team that is made up of very homogenous members is bad because it experiences informational hazard as he terms it (Bloom, 1956). They bring out wonderful performance if they major only on their area of competence if their coordination is good; unluckily, when these homogenous groups encounter complex tasks outside their area of competence, then they will have a problem in acquiring appropriate and applicable information thus performing extremely poor (Nicole, 2003). The two cases mentioned above, very homogenous and very diverse groups are highly risky in their own settings in to contrast to average diverse teams which are at a lower risk facing the adversities the mentioned teams face. The connection between team diversity and performance is vital in business institutions, educational institutions, industries that require so much reliability like airlines amongst others. It is always very important for managers to balance the composition of each team to form a mild diversified team to reduce any risks that may arise (Horwitz, 2005). Team Diversity in Education Setting In educational institutions whether privately owned by the state, a diverse team work is very important. There are various theories of education and the team of diversity is one of them and it has helped world wide helped to bring out the need as to why diversity is vital the education sector. In educational institutions, the management team, class teachers students, parents, subject departmental heads and the non-teaching staff come from different cultural backgrounds, have different experiences and personal traits. Each of these depends on each other for good performance. All these are required to work together as a team without conflicting in order to increase school performance and compete with other institutions effectively (Bloom, 1956). At local and international levels, the people in charge of education administration in conjunction with educational practitioners and scholars should be able to come with educational curricula that put emphasis on the positive aspects of various cultures and encourage teaching foreign languages to create a greater understanding of each other all over the world because they are people who decide to work or even study outside their own countries (Joon, 2004). Programs should also be created to encourage multicultural methods of teaching and not teaching one way of tackling challenges but teaching multiple methods of dealing with any particular problems. When teaching at all the levels of education, it is necessary to stress intercultural skills of communication, literature that is basic for all, skills of interacting , language skill, information analysis skills, skills to be able to predict how ones behavior and actions will affect another person, skills to learn, understand, accept the variances and resemblances found in other peoples’ cultures and how their opinions or perceptions can contribute in solving problems that arise in day to day life around the world (Bloom, 1956). Regional and international organizations should play a big role in trying to empower the structures that are under their support and other local organization available in their area of existence. By doing this, they should take a bigger step of completely putting into use the opportunities that arise from new communication technologies and technologies. In Conclusion, considering the ideas brought out in this paper, it is true that if any given organization ignores the rule of team diversity then it is bound to reduce its efficacy and probably close down at long last. All over the world, there are many competing bodies targeting to become the best. All customers cannot be attracted to a lazy body that lags behind others year after year. Those bodies that are already at the top cannot sit back and relax because others are each and every day chasing to overtake the. There is always no point of perfection in business bodies and each of them keeps on working restlessly and learning new ways of becoming the best. Customers will possibly look for the biggest, customer friendly, fastest, reasonable prices amongst other considerations Most students and parents will prefer educational institutions that perform better than others all round whether in student performance or in service provision. This can always be achieved if institutional managements do not overlook diverse team work on the various ectors of the institutions. Looking at the class performance, class teachers should find for ways where students can work together to assist each other because each student has a special qualification that another one does not have. Such major way is coming up with discussion and working groups where the strongest and the weakest students are integrated to work together. Since each student has their own field of strength, they will assist each to understand better the concepts that are taught in the classroom. References Albert, R., (2008). “Culture or Commerce”. Canadian Culture After Free Trade, Stoddart Pub, Vol 23 pp 123-67. Baeker, G., (2000). (Inventory on Cultural Diversity Challenges and Opportunities”. International Network on Cultural Policy (INCP). Bloom B. S. (1956). Taxonomy for the Educational Objectives, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc. Emmanuel, D., (2003). “La culture est aussi une industrie”. Le Monde, 17 juillet p. 1 et p. 8. Footer, E. & Christoph, B., (2000). “Trade Liberalization and Cultural Policy” Journal of International Economic Law, Vol. 3, p. 115. Horwitz, S.K. (2005). "The compositional impact of team diversity on performance: theoretical considerations". Human Resource Development Review, 4: 219. Horwitz, S.K. & Horwitz, I.B. (2007). "The effects of team diversity on team outcomes: a meta-analytic review of team demography". Journal of Management, 33: 987. Hyun-kyung, C., (2000). “Building the Korean Film Industry’s Competitiveness” Pacific and Rim Law - Policy Journal, Vol. 9,p. 353. Joon, S., (2004). “Int’l Organizations Look to Save Culture From Economy” The Korea Times, 6 février Kakabadse, A., (1995). The WTO and the Commdification of Cultural Products “. Implications for Asia, Vol. 22, No 2, Media Asia, p. 71. Knight, T., (1999). “The Dual Nature of Cultural Products” University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review, Vol. 57, p. 165. Mathieu, J.E. & Zajac, D.M. (1990). "A review and meta-analysis of the antecedents, correlates and consequences of organizational commitment". Psychological Bulletin, 108: 171. Nadler, L., (1984). The Handbook of Human Resource Development. New York: John Wiley & Sons . Nicole, V., (2003). “Deux ans de travaux pour une Convention”. Le Monde, mardi 14 octobre, p. 32. Riketta, M. (2002). "Attitudinal organizational commitment and job performance: a meta-analysis". Journal of Organizational Behaviour, 23: 257. Read More