Abstract

Team has becoming the basic unit of working and knowledge management in organizations. One of the research focuses of team management is team composition. This study distinguished value, social category, and information diversity about team composition, and explore relationships between these diversity types and knowledge sharing, creation and innovation performance. The moderating role of task interdependence and complexity, including number of exceptions and un-analyzability, also tested in this study.
Using hierarchical regression analysis, we analyzed data from 52 R&D teams. We found team diversity affect team outcomes. The value diversity has negative effect on knowledge sharing, creation and innovation performance. Social category diversity has positive effect on innovation performance. Organizational tenure of information diversity has positive effect on knowledge sharing and innovation performance, and status diversity has negative effect on knowledge creation. Interaction between informational and social category diversity positively influences knowledge creation and innovation performance. Besides, interaction between social category and value diversity negatively influences innovation performance. Finally, task characteristics about number of exceptions and un-analyzability moderating the effects of value diversity on knowledge creation and innovation performance respectively.