Originally written on 25 September 2017
Paper URL: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Susan_Jackson14/publication/229100996_The_consequences_of_diversity_in_multidisciplinary_work_teams/links/565f62bf08ae1ef929854906.pdf
Summary
For companies to compete within the global marketplace, multidisciplinary teams are seen as a necessary, and important step to provide structure, bring like-minded people together, to organise and bring together skills, people and abilities and with the sole aim of developing innovative products and services.
Despite this; companies are increasingly finding that multidisciplinary teams do not necessarily produce the desired results; citing unproductive conflict, high turnover of staff, or poor internal communication, office politics, or team members siding with people they usually gravitate towards.
The paper looks at how diversity affects the way team members feel and behave with each other; looking at different challenges such as language barriers, perspective, power, status, and team cohesiveness; and how to address them through organisation, planning and a mix of different actors and stakeholders, such as marketing, suppliers, end-delivery and end-users to fully drive a product to market.
Whilst the popularity of team-based structures reflect the potential to achieve outcomes that could not be achieved by an individual, the payoff of multidisciplinary teams are not always automatic. An organisation should be ready to plan, organise, experiment and reflect upon the current workflow to inform how multidisciplinary teams could improve in the future.
To be effective, multidisciplinary teams must manage the various assets that a team mix brings; such as how they feel about each other, how to manage internal communication issues and expectations of the stakeholders.
Organisations should therefore focus on experimenting, learning upon what is known to date, iterating rapidly and using this knowledge to inform the direction of future team diversity.
The paper states that diversity typically refers to gender, ethnicity, age comparisons, but it also refers to the mix of different stakeholders within the different echelons of the organization hierarchy; in short mixing the junior with senior officials; but it could also mean people in different geographical locations.
However, whilst the benefits of a diverse team include engagement, a sense of ownership, team tenure, and shared values; the paper states that this process should be managed to reduce issues in native language, geography and ensure that design decisions are focused upon the task-relevant knowledge.
Longer-term, this results in increased cohesiveness, satisfaction of self/team, a balance of interpersonal relationships, increased friendships.
Whilst some short-term negatives is that people are uncomfortable, on the whole people find it stimulating, and aids learning.
The consequences of diversity in teams have important consequences, including how individuals feel about oneself, how they process information, how they make and reach decisions; and how they carry out tasks.
Further, diversity also shapes the social dynamics within the the differing members of the team, communication patterns within the team, communications across team boundaries; and teams need to be introduced into organisations as a way to increase learning, team effectiveness, and reinforce cohesiveness.
Success in such teams is lead by organisations electing managers with strong leadership skills, and utilise social science theory to further inform, reflect and improve upon existing frameworks, models and structures to provide long-term, scalable results.