The article titled “Gender diversity and team performance under time pressure: The role of team withdrawal and information elaboration” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. In their research, Stefan Razinskas together with Eric Kearney (University of Potsdam), Matthias Weiss (Ruhr-Univ. Bochum), and Martin Hoegl (LMU Munich) investigate the role of gender diversity for the performance of teams. Based on experimental data, they show that—although gender-diverse teams outperform gender-homogeneous teams when having enough time to utilize the diverse perspectives, skills, and expertise of their members—they more likely turn quiet and disengage from the task when being pressed for time. This adverse process of team withdrawal is found to undermine information elaboration, which is the process via which the positive potential of diversity is assumed to be realized. This research is published open access and can be downloaded here.

Summary

Findings in the extant literature are mixed concerning when and how gender diversity benefits team performance. We develop and test a model that posits that gender-diverse teams outperform gender-homogeneous teams when perceived time pressure is low, whereas the opposite is the case when perceived time pressure is high. Drawing on the Categorization-Elaboration Model (CEM; van Knippenberg, De Dreu, & Homan, 2004), we begin with the assumption that information elaboration is the process whereby gender diversity fosters positive effects on team performance. However, also in line with the CEM, we argue that this process can be disrupted by adverse team dynamics. Specifically, we argue that as time pressure increases, higher gender diversity leads to more team withdrawal, which, in turn, moderates the positive indirect effect of gender diversity on team performance via information elaboration such that this effect becomes weaker as team withdrawal increases. In an experimental study of 142 four-person teams, we found support for this model that explains why perceived time pressure affects the performance of gender-diverse teams more negatively than that of gender-homogeneous teams. Our study sheds new light on when and how gender diversity can become either an asset or a liability for team performance.