A Multi-level Influence Study Of Team Heterogeneity On Performance In Multi-cultural Teams

Along with the complexity of technology and management,heterogeneous team has become important working units of organization innovation.Heterogeneous team varies in the characteristics of knowledge,value,working attitude,culture,age,gender,etc,which provides the possibility of innovative interdisciplinary decision-making under different perspectives.As more and more companies seek for acquisitions and investments overseas,a large number of multinational corporations and organizations emerge,and provide the opportunities that employees of different countries,cultures and personalities work in the same team,which makes multi-cultural teams increasingly common in the team composition of multinational corporations.Multi-cultural team has the typical characteristic of culture diversity,and managing multi-cultural teams is the new demand in the era of globalization.How to effectively manage multi-cultural teams,benefit from the advantages of innovative ideas collision,and reduce the phenomenon of "team faultline",team conflicts and inefficient communications between team members to fulfill team goals and improve team performance,are important research questions of practical implication in current developing trend of economy and society.Prior research has explored the mechanism of team heterogeneity,but lacks the empirical studies in Chinese context.Chinese multi-cultural teams have distinctive features of innovation-oriented projects as task nature,bi-cultural team composition,and most multi-cultural team members have high educational background and strong professionalism.Therefore,they have high psychological demand for job satisfaction and justice perception,and they are generally dissatisfied with the "glass ceiling" in the workplace rising channel that increase employee turnover rates of Chinese employees.This study takes Chinese multi-cultural teams as the investigated subject,on the basis of review and integration of existing studies,explores the influence of team heterogeneity to performance through a two-stage research design.First,through exploratory multi-case study and grounded theory,the influences of team heterogeneity on individual level and team level in multi-cultural team are analyzed,then theoretical framework and research propositions are proposed.Then,data are collected through a questionnaire survey,the model and hypothesis are tested enpirically,and research conclusions are generalized and refined.Finally,from a dynamic perspective,the system dynamics model is used to analyze the evolution process over time of multi-cultural team at different stages of team development.The main contents of this thesis are as follows:First,this study explores Chinese multi-cultural team heterogeneity influence mechanism from an individual level With exploratory case study and grounded theory,through in-depth interviews of 42 employees of multi-cultural teams in Beijing,Shanghai,Shenzhen,and Dalian,this study identifies the influencing factors of individual outcomes in multi-cultural teams,which includes justice perception,in-group social network and team heterogeneity.Employees' justice perception and in-group social network both have positive impacts on individual outcomes,while team heterogeneity attenuates the positive relationship between justice perception and individual outcomes.The theoretical model and hypotheses are proposed based on case analysis.With a questionnaire survey,the model has been empirically tested,and the conclusions of case study are supported to a certain extent.In this part,the relationship between team heterogeneity and individual outcomes of Chinese multi-cultural teams are explored and discussed.Second,this study explores Chinese multi-cultural team heterogeneity influence mechanism from a team level With exploratory case study and grounded theory,through in-depth interviews of 13 multi-cultural teams from 6 multinational corporations,this study identifies the influencing factors of heterogeneity on team outcomes,including communication and conflict.By analyzing the relationships between these factors,this study reveals how multi-cultural team heterogeneity influences team performance and cohesiveness through team conflicts,and how team heterogeneity moderates the relationship between team communication and team outcome.On this basis,the mechanism model of multi-cultural team heterogeneity and hypotheses are proposed,and empirical test is conducted with sample from a questionnaire survey,exploring the relationships and effect path between multi-cultural team heterogeneity and team outcome in Chinese context.Finally,this study explores the evolution process of multi-cultural team from a dynamic perspective.By using system dynamics model,the individual level and team level of multi-cultural team are connected through knowledge sharing and learning subsystem,and the internal relationship and external influencing factors between the two levels are discussed.The dynamic characteristics of team heterogeneity influence are revealed.