Meet the Faculty!

As processes, products, and services are becoming increasingly complex, organizations often charge diverse teams with generating the solutions that enable competitive advantages. Since diverse teams – that is, teams comprising members with different educational, functional, and demographic backgrounds – possess a broader range of task-relevant resources (skills, knowledge, perspectives), it is reasonable to assume that they should outperform homogeneous teams on complex, innovative tasks.

To date, however, no systematic relationship has been found between the breadth of resources a team possesses and the quality of the team’s performance. Apparently, many teams are unable to leverage the potential inherent in high levels of task-relevant types of diversity. In my research, I investigate under what conditions and through which processes heterogeneous teams create synergies such that performance is substantially better than could be expected on the basis of the respective individuals’ competencies alone. Put simply, I investigate when and how the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. To this end, I study variables such as leadership behaviors, personality traits and communication styles of team members, team processes such as implicit coordination, and structural aspects such as the distribution of power among the team members. To gain a fuller understanding of these phenomena, I conduct experiments to establish causal linkages among variables as well as longitudinal field studies in real-life organizational teams to ascertain the generalizability of the experimental findings in more complex environments. In the various studies that are all part of this larger research project, I collaborate with numerous colleagues from different German, Dutch, Spanish, and U.S. universities. The topics I study are of major practical importance because an organization’s success increasingly depends on the ability of its most competent members to combine their skills, abilities, and perspectives to generate innovations.  

--- Eric Kearney, Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management