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The purpose of this study was to explore the relation between diversity in work group members’ employment arrangements and the actual performance of the work groups.

A field study was conducted on 31 work groups in a public plant belonging to the industrial sector that constitute a unique data set. The 441 employees are contracted under four significantly different employment arrangements and are mixed together in heterogeneous work groups, but perform similar tasks.

The results indicated that the influence of employment arrangement diversity on work group performance is best represented as variation, and work arrangements diversity is positively correlated with improved work group performance.

The study design prevented assessment of employees’ opinions. Rather, the authors used objective type of employment arrangements as the basis for calculating diversity as separation. Using mean Euclidean distance as suggested by Harrison and Klein (2007), the authors arbitrarily set the distance between two different employment arrangements as one.

The research results help in the stages of recruiting, structuring and development and application of necessary work team. Formal emphasis of diversity in work arrangements improves performance.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies using unique data set analyzing real-life team diversity and performance in the public sector. The research highly contributes to organizational decision-making processes regarding the importance of incorporating non-standard work arrangements in organizations. Management’s implementation of formal diversity seems to alleviate the negative sides of diversity and increases its positive performance effects.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if team personality composition has any effect on group work performance of undergraduate students in China.

Using a questionnaire based on the Big-Five framework to collect data on personality traits, this study investigated whether in the Chinese education setting overall effectiveness of university students working in groups was related to the different personalities of the group members. Students of two undergraduate business programs jointly run by an Australian university and a Chinese university in Shanghai participated in the research.

The findings reveal that aggregated personality traits have no effect on team effectiveness but homogeneity in emotional stability among group members does have a positive impact on group performance. Based on a comprehensive review of studies concerning the Chinese education approach, it is believed that the outcome of this study may reflect to a certain extent the influence of traditional learning method on how university students interact with team members in group work hence affecting group performance.

This study has surveyed 166 undergraduate students on their personality traits and performance in group work. A larger sample size can help improve the generalizability of the findings.

The findings of this study shed light on how group work can be used more effectively in learning through proper assessment task design and guidance from the facilitator.

The outcome of this research also provides insight on how group work in higher education can better prepare students for the Chinese workforce.

While studies on relationship between personality mix and team effectiveness in business setting are plenty, there is relatively little research on how team personality composition can impact on group performance in education especially in Asian countries. This study is one of the first attempts to supplement the inadequacy in this regard.

Acknowledging that only examining the main effects of diversity may be limiting, the authors explore integrating van Knippenberg et al.'s (2004) categorization–elaboration model (CEM) of workgroup diversity as a linchpin in the relationship between empowering leadership and performance in age-diverse work groups. While prior research has focused almost exclusively on the impact of transformational leadership in diverse contexts, few studies have found the positive effects of transformational leadership to be diminished in certain age-diverse contexts. Consequently, the authors investigate whether empowering leadership may be a better approach in this context due to its emphasis on accommodating and participative behaviors.

Using survey data gathered from work group members across a wide array of industries (N = 214), the authors test for the moderating effects of empowering leadership on the relationship between age diversity and work group performance and its indirect relationship via information elaboration (while controlling for transformational leadership).

Empowering leadership positively moderated the direct relationship between age diversity and work group performance and the indirect relationship via information elaboration, whereas transformational leadership had the opposite effect. “Coaching” and “showing concern/interacting with the team” drove the positive effects of empowering leadership, and “personal recognition” and “intellectual stimulation” predicted the negative effects of transformational leadership.

This research offers insights into how managers can lead age-diverse work groups more effectively (i.e. by utilizing an empowering as opposed to a transformational leadership approach, with a particular emphasis on “coaching” and “showing concern/interacting with the team” behaviors).

The study identifies an “alternative” moderating contingency to the age diversity–performance relationship (empowering leadership).

The purpose of this paper is to help organizations capitalize on the potential advantages of age diversity by offering insight into two new moderators in the age diversity, work group performance relationship – status congruity and cognition-based trust.

The authors surveyed 197 employees and 56 supervisors across 59 work groups to test for the moderating effects of status congruity and cognition-based trust on the age diversity, work group performance relationship.

The results demonstrated, on the one hand, that under conditions of status congruity (i.e. when there were high levels of perceived status legitimacy and veridicality) and/or when perceptions of cognition-based trust were high within the group, the relationship between age diversity and work group performance was positive. On the other hand, under conditions of status incongruity and/or low levels of cognition-based trust, this relationship was negative.

The findings contribute to the literature by being the first to provide empirical evidence for the theorized effects of status on the performance of age-diverse work groups and also by demonstrating the effects of cognition-based trust in a new context – age-diverse work groups.

Arising from the study’s findings are several strategies, which are expected to help organizations enhance perceptions of status congruity and/or trust and ultimately the performance of their age-diverse work groups.

The paper is the first to empirically demonstrate the moderating effects of status congruity and cognition-based trust on the age diversity, work group performance relationship. The study also establishes important distinctions between the effects of objective status differences vs status perceptions.

This chapter reviews recent theoretical developments and empirical research, to examine the causes and consequences of identity processes in relation to collaboration in work groups and group performance. Our central proposition is that identification in work groups can have beneficial as well as detrimental effects, depending on the nature of the shared identity, and the content of distinctive group norms. First, we examine some of the complications stemming from the fact that identification in work settings typically involves groups that can be defined at different levels of inclusiveness and where people can be seen as having multiple cross-cutting identities. Then, we move on to show that processes of identification affect the way people view their co-workers and supervisors, causing the same objective behavior to be interpreted and responded to in a fundamentally different way. Finally, we examine how normative expectations about prototypical group behavior determine group processes and group outcomes, with the consequence that identification and commitment can affect work motivation and collective performance in different ways, depending on the content of distinctive group norms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of work characteristics on members’ self‐efficacy and collective efficacy, and the subsequent effect on police officers’ performance.

A multilevel model is adopted to analyze quantitative data obtained by using 812 police officers and 54 chiefs of police stations in Taiwan as the research objects.

The authors found that work characteristics affected members’ self‐efficacy and collective efficacy, which further affected the individual‐ and group‐level performance and the contextual effect of social work characteristics (SWCs) and collective efficacy on self‐efficacy and individual performance. The authors also confirmed the cross‐level moderation of social characteristics on the relationship between motivational work characteristics (MWCs) and self‐efficacy, and between self‐efficacy and individual performance.

A limitation was the characteristics of the sample, which consisted of mostly first‐line uniformed police officers in Taiwan. From the perspective of managerial implications, it is felt that police organizations should beef up the training on police officers’ collective efficacy, such as building group spirit, improving members’ sense of responsibility, and building up trust with the organization.

The findings prove that the study of work design is particularly important for enhancing the management effectiveness of police organization, because it explains the causes of a number of organizational behaviors as well as a number of important results that influence the police organization (e.g. efficacy and performance).

The paper seeks to demonstrate the characteristics of group work that are required to teach the attributes of real world venture teamwork in tertiary entrepreneurship programmes.

One‐tailed Spearman correlation analysis is used to assess the associations between students' grades in four group assessment tasks involving different levels of complexity and collaboration and the attributes of teamwork.

The results indicate that students learn more of the attributes of venture teamwork, the more complex the group task, and the more collaboration required to complete it.

The results cannot be generalised due to the small sample size and restriction of the sample to one course in entrepreneurship. However, the findings are valid conceptually; thus the study makes important contributions to knowledge.

The findings should help tertiary educators to improve the design and implementation of their group assessment tasks to reflect the attributes of real world venture teamwork.

While considerable work has been carried out on entrepreneurship education at the tertiary level, limited attention has been paid to teaching venture teamwork as part of entrepreneurship programmes. Academics often claim that their courses cover the attributes of venture teamwork when students work co‐operatively rather than collaboratively on assessment tasks. The study identifies attributes of group work in the classroom that are consistent with real world venture teamwork.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

Social loafing is described in the literature as a frequent problem reducing individuals' performance when working in groups. This paper aims to utilize the social identity approach and proposes that under conditions of heightened group salience social loafing can be reduced and turned into social laboring (i.e. increased performance).

Two experimental studies are conducted to examine the impact of participant's group membership salience on task performance. In Study 1, school teachers work either in coactive or in collective working conditions on brainstorming tasks. In Study 2, participants perform both a brainstorming task and a motor task.

The results show social laboring effects. As predicted, participants in the high salient group conditions outperform participants in the low salient group conditions and the coactive individual condition.

The results indicate that rather than individuating group members or tasks to overcome social loafing, managers can increase group performance by focusing on group members' perceptions of their groups as important and salient.

The studies presented in this paper show that social identity theory and self categorization theory can fruitfully be applied to the field of group performance. The message of these studies for applied settings is that collective work in groups must not necessarily negatively impact performance, i.e. social loafing. By heightening the salience of group memberships groups can even outperform coactively working individuals.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of “feeling trusted asymmetry” on work group performance and individual outcomes. The author adopts the term “feeling trusted asymmetry” to differentiate the subject from studies of trust asymmetry that consider differences in (mutual) ratings of trust between members of a dyad.

The author tested this effectiveness with data from a sample of 293 subordinate–supervisor dyads in 63 work groups from the People’s Republic of China.

Results of multilevel analysis reveal that group feeling trusted asymmetry (the degree to which subordinates differ in perceptions of the level of trust from their immediate manager in their group) lowers group performance. Furthermore, individual feeling trusted asymmetry (a subordinate perceiving more or less trust from their immediate manager than other subordinates in the group) affects employees’ workplace satisfaction, but not individual performance and creativity.

These findings have important practical implications, as they provide companies with a feasible way to manage employee’s relations based on their perception of trust from the direct supervisor.