Selected Research on Work Team Diversity

In recent years the US workforce has become increasingly diverse. At the same time, organisations are being confronted with problems that cannot be effectively dealt with by staying within conventional hierarchical and functional bounderies; thus we see a growing use of teams that span these boundaries. This report includes seven scientific papers from a recent conference - "Work Team Dynamics and Productivity Within the Context of Diversity" - that add to the research on diverse teams. It is divided into three general areas: the management of diverse teams; the impact of group composition; and the dynamics of group process. These exploratory studies are primarily meant for researchers who are studying the dynamics of workforce diversity, but practitioners with an interest in research should also find them useful.