Diversity and Conflict in Teams : A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Many organizations have seen their workforce become increasingly diverse over the past few decades and a prevalent notion is that this growing diversity gives rise to conflicts within workgroups. However, empirical findings on the association between diversity and conflict in teams are mixed. Therefore, our study provides a comprehensive meta-analysis on the question whether and how diversity and conflict in teams are interrelated. In particular, we examine the associations between different types of diversity (i.e., informational, social category, and value diversity) as well as specific informational and social category diversity attributes (i.e., function, education, organizational tenure, age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and culture) and task, relationship, and process conflict. Moreover, we analyze the influence of both team context (i.e., team type, team size, and team tenure) and methodological moderators (among them study setting, subjects, and organizational level of analysis). Based on 313 effect sizes from 77 studies comprising 6,446 teams, we find small, positive associations of both informational and value diversity with task conflict, all three types of diversity with relationship conflict, and value diversity with process conflict. In addition, moderator analyses reveal several noteworthy contingencies of the diversity-conflict associations. We discuss our findings and implications for future research.