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Research Article

A Study on the Effect of Intra-Team Diversity on Team Learning

Kim, Munju

Published: January 2014 · Vol. 43, No. 3 · pp. 671-704
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Abstract

This study analyzes the effects of team diversity on team learning in Korean organizations based on empirical research conducted at the team level of analysis. While diversity research has been predominantly conducted in multi-ethnic countries where diversity management is unavoidable, it holds significant implications for Korean organizations where diversity is increasingly growing. Accordingly, this study comprehensively examined the effects of functional background diversity, academic major diversity, and educational level diversity—known to be highly task-relevant—as well as gender diversity and age diversity, which reflect individual attributes, based on theoretical foundations explaining the effects of diversity. The study also sought to identify variables that could moderate the effects of diversity. In particular, team learning was categorized into knowledge sharing learning and productive discourse learning according to the dimension and type of learning. Surveys were conducted among companies where work is performed in teams. The analysis results showed that functional background diversity had a positive effect on both knowledge sharing learning and productive discourse learning, while educational level diversity had a negative effect on knowledge sharing learning. However, contrary to the hypothesis, academic major diversity also had a negative effect on knowledge sharing learning. Gender diversity, a personal attribute variable, was found to have a negative effect on both knowledge sharing learning and productive discourse learning, as hypothesized. However, the negative effect of gender diversity was reduced through interaction with team tenure, thereby demonstrating the moderating effect of team tenure. Team tenure was also found to moderate the negative effect of age diversity. Additionally, the negative effects of academic major diversity and educational level diversity on productive discourse learning were reduced through their respective interactions with functional background diversity. Based on these research findings, the implications and contributions of team diversity for organizations, teams, and practitioners were discussed.
Keywords: 기능적 배경 다양성생산적인 담론 학습성별 다양성연령 다양성전공 다양성지식공유 학습팀 근속팀 다양성팀 학습학력 다양성