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Organisations have widely adopted enterprise social media (ESM) to improve employees' task performance. This study aims to explore the mediating role of perceived task structure on the relationship between ESM usage and employee task performance. The authors investigate the moderating effects of perceived team diversity on the relationship between ESM usage and perceived task structure.

The authors conducted a questionnaire survey in China on 251 working professionals who use social media in their respective organisations.

Results showed that employees' perception of task structure considerably mediates the relationship between ESM usage and task performance. Findings also confirmed that perceived team diversity negatively affects the relationship between ESM usage and perceived task interdependence.

Practitioners and/or managers should pay attention to the effect of ESM usage on employee's perceived task structure. Furthermore, they should focus on the level of team diversity when adopting ESM to enhance task performance.

This study contributes to the knowledge of perceived task structure in explaining the effect of ESM usage on task performance based on communication visibility theory. This work presents the relationship among ESM usage, perceived task structure, perceived team diversity and task performance. Moreover, this research enriches the literature on ESM usage by investigating the moderating roles of perceived team diversity whilst presenting the negative effects of perceived team diversity.

This paper aims to explore the effect of perceived “self-to-team” deep-level diversity on team’s creative output from a social identity lens’ view.

An experimental study was designed (n = 30 in each experimental condition, namely, homogeneous, heterogeneous and mixed) and vignettes were used to manipulate the experimental conditions. Employees from four Indian organizations participated in the experimental study.

Results indicated that deep-level homogeneous group perceived higher team creative output as compared to the deep-level heterogeneous group. Perceived team creativity climate was found to mediate the effect of team diversity on team’s creative output. Further, it was observed that the quality of perceived creativity climate (positive and negative) moderated the relationship between diversity and team’s creative output.

The diversity–climate–creativity model presented in the paper may help managers to understand how “deep-level” group composition affects a group’s creative performance. The findings of this study may act as a platform for building effective diversity management policies.

The current research has contributed to the limited team diversity and creativity literature. Based on the experimental study, the paper has uniquely investigated team diversity and creativity link along with examining the role of a mediator (creativity climate) and moderator (quality climate) in the relationship. As the study was conducted in Indian settings, the findings were interpreted based on the typical Indian psycho-social characteristics.

This paper aims to examine the impact of individual and group-level variables on knowledge exchange and identification in age diverse teams. From a diversity perspective, influences of age-related diversity perceptions and diversity beliefs (level 1) are compared with effects of objective age diversity (level 2). From a management perspective, the paper goes beyond age diversity and investigates the incremental effects of team and individual characteristics from a team learning perspective.

Questionnaire data of 516 team members and their supervisors in 73 organizational teams were analyzed in a multilevel approach.

Objective age diversity had a negative effect on knowledge exchange and identification. Beyond that, age-related diversity perceptions and positive diversity beliefs on the individual level predict the effect of objective diversity. Relativizing the impact of diversity, individual characteristics (knowing the team experts, clear understanding of goals) and team characteristics (team climate, time for knowledge exchange) explain the largest proportion of variance in the dependent variables underlining the importance of team learning variables.

Compared to objective diversity, subjective diversity perceptions and diversity beliefs are relevant predictors of processes and attitudes in heterogenic teams.

There are multiple leverages for management strategies beyond the mostly fixed age diversity in teams on the individual and group level.

This paper evaluates the cross-level interplay between objective diversity, perceived subjective diversity and diversity beliefs and revalues the impact of HR-management in age diverse teams.

This paper aims to investigate the mediating effect of an individual’s satisfaction with the team between conflict and training motivation. This study provides understanding regarding how the type of conflict within a team can influence an individual’s team experience which can, in turn, influence that individual’s training motivation and impact future teams.

Data were collected from 498 upper-level business students engaged in a team project. Structural equation modeling examined the serial mediation relationship between perceived diversity, conflict (affective and cognitive), individual satisfaction with the team and training motivation (learning and transfer).

Individual satisfaction with the team partially mediates the relationship between affective conflict and both training motivation dimensions, and fully mediates the relationship between cognitive conflict and both training motivation dimensions.

To encourage future participation in teams, managers should explore ways to increase an individual’s satisfaction, such as increasing the cognitive conflict by incorporating diversity within teams and reducing the affective conflict within teams. Likewise, by increasing an individual’s satisfaction with the team, managers can increase both the motivation to learn and transfer new knowledge.

This paper illuminates the role that an individual’s satisfaction with the team has between conflict and training motivation. Moreover, this paper demonstrates that more research on an individual’s satisfaction with the team is needed.

Besides diversity's positive effects, groups of “we” against “them” may form in accordance with social categorization theory, showing diversity's negative consequences. The authors aim to reconcile these results and examine their boundary conditions.

The authors studied 584 working professionals from five contexts (transnational companies dealing with multicultural interactions) and analyzed data using moderated-mediation procedures.

A leader-promoting diversity climate plays a crucial role in moderating the negative relationship between perceived dissimilarity and group identification, which is mediated by value dissimilarity.

This study mainly contributes by treating dissimilarity as a multicomponent construct, emphasizing the crucial differences embodied in various conceptualizations of dissimilarity – namely visible and value dissimilarity. For dissimilarity to result in group identification, the results highlight leaders' crucial role, beyond that of organizations and individuals, in stimulating a diversity-embracing climate in work units.

The need to integrate men and women more effectively into team roles requires a fuller consideration of the dynamics of work‐team diversity and the consequences for both behavior and cognition among team members. Drawing from sociological and psychological perspectives, this study examines the influence of team gender composition and gender‐orientation of the task on members' perceptions of their team's performance. The participants for this study included 216 university students (108 men, 108 women) who were randomly assigned to one of three types of gender‐mixed teams – male‐dominated, female‐dominated and balanced‐gender work‐teams. Teams were required to generate, in a (videotaped) team meeting, a negotiation strategy for two business‐related cases. Self‐report instruments provided information regarding perceptions of team performance, and expert judges offered objective measures of team performance. The findings of this study offer striking evidence that team gender composition and the gender‐orientation of the task, can clearly affect member perceptions of the quality of their team's performance, regardless of the actual performance level achieved.

A narrow focus of past diversity research and inconsistent findings have contributed to a lack of understanding of how to manage diversity for positive outcomes. Focusing on age, gender and ethnic diversity, this paper aims to review literature on group objective demographic diversity and individual perceived demographic diversity to present an integrated multilevel framework for our improved understanding and to present testable propositions.

The authors conducted a thorough review of 51 empirical studies of demographic diversity at individual and group levels to propose a multilevel framework.

Drawing on information elaboration theory, social categorization theory and social identity theory, an integrated multilevel framework is proposed at individual and group levels. The framework suggests that demographic diversity (age, gender and ethnicity) aids positive information elaboration processes, while also causing negative social categorization processes. These processes impact individual and group outcomes. The framework also identifies moderating factors not sufficiently addressed in the demographic diversity literature. Propositions and implications for future research in the field of demographic diversity are presented.

This review provides an integrated multilevel framework of objective and perceived demographic diversity and its positive and negative processes and effects at both individual and group levels, drawn from information elaboration, social categorization and social identity theories.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how organizational diversity may be associated with immigrants’ quality of coworker relationships. More specifically, this paper examines how immigrants’ perceived deep-level similarity and perceived workplace ethnic diversity may be associated with their quality of coworker relationships.

A final sample of 347 immigrant employees were surveyed. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Immigrants’ quality of coworker relationships is positively associated with their perceived deep-level similarity with other coworkers. In addition, perceived workplace ethnic diversity moderates this relationship such that the relation is stronger as perceived workplace ethnic diversity increases.

The study and analyses are based on cross-sectional and single-source data and cannot determine causality. The study is also restricted to immigrants in the USA.

Findings provide evidence that increased levels of ethnic diversity and deep-level similarity in the workplace may improve immigrants’ quality of relationships, helping them integrate more successfully in organizations. Thus, managers seeking to benefit from diversity should strive for the creation of truly multicultural organizations or workgroups and focus on fostering similarities in deep-level attributes to maximize their potential.

Immigrants are an important asset for organizations, but research about their inclusion in organizations is limited, especially when examining their integration in their workplaces. This study addresses some of these limitations by looking at the effect of diversity in organizations.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between perceived inclusion (individual and group-level) and team creativity climate (TCC) and explore the role of team learning climate (TLC) and task interdependency in the above relationship.

Data were collected using questionnaires from 24 Indian organizations. The respondents were junior and middle-level employees (N = 303) working in small teams (n = 73). The cut-off criteria for sample team selection were at least three team members within a team had responded and at least 60% within-group response rate was achieved.

Perceived inclusion (PI) of employees had a positive influence on TCC via TLC. However, the negative effect of team-level differences in perceived inclusion (TPID) was also mediated by the learning climate. Task interdependency moderated the PI-TLC relationship in such a way that in a high task interdependency situation, the negative effect of TPID on learning climate is reduced, while in a low task interdependency situation, the negative effect is enhanced.

The current research has contributed to the limited literature on PI and team creativity. This paper has uniquely investigated TLC as an intervening variable in the PI-TCC relationship. The paper has encapsulated the theoretical and practical underpinnings of inclusion beliefs in the modern organizational context.