Managing Nationality Diversity: The Interactive Effect of Leaders’ Cultural Intelligence and Task Interdependence
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12131 |
| Published date | 01 July 2016 |
| Date | 01 July 2016 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 27, 628–645 (2016)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12131
Managing Nationality Diversity: The
Interactive Eect of Leaders’ Cultural
Intelligence and Task Interdependence
Doris Rosenauer, Astrid C. Homan,1Christiane A. L. Horstmeier
and Sven C. Voelpel
Jacobs University Bremen, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Campus Ring 1, D-28759 Bremen,
Germany, and 1University of Amsterdam, Work and Organizational Psychology, Weesperplein 4, 1018 XA
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Corresponding author email: rosenauer.doris@gmx.de
In light of the workforce’s increasing nationality diversity, our study explores the an-
tecedents for the successful management of nationality diversity as visualized in a
favourable diversity climate and enhanced team performance. We propose a double-
contingency model in which we argue that the eects of nationality diversity will be de-
pendent upon task interdependence and leaders’ cultural intelligence. Wepropose that na-
tionality diversity will be moreconsequential in more interdependent teams, in which team
interactions and processes are more salient. Moreover, team leaders with higher cultural
intelligence will possess the skills to foster adequate team processes and thereby enhance
diversity climate and performance of nationally diverse, more interdependentteams. We
collected multi-source data from 63 work teams (N =410) and their supervisors at a
German facility management company.Moderated regression analyses supported the hy-
pothesized three-way interaction betweennationality diversity, task interdependence and
leaders’ cultural intelligence. Additional simple slope analysis showed that nationality
diversity is positively related to diversity climate and performance only when both team
leaders’ cultural intelligence and task interdependence are high. Our study not only pro-
vides recommendations for successful nationality diversity management but also yields
theoretical implications for diversity and cultural intelligence research.
Continuous globalization and the growing per-
centage of non-native employees have made work-
forces across the world increasingly diverse in
terms of nationalities (e.g. Arends-T´
oth and Van
De Vijver, 2003; McKay, Avery and Morris, 2008;
Zick et al., 2001). Many organizations try to ac-
tively address this changing labour market, as
diversity has been shown to be a double-edged
sword which can have either positive or nega-
tive consequences (Milliken and Martins, 1996).
Research instruments can be obtained from the corre-
sponding author.This research was funded by the cooper-
ating company. The opinions expressed in this article are
those of the authors and not those of the company.
For instance, 80% of the top ranked Global For-
tune 500 companies of 2013, representing a broad
range of industries and various countries, adver-
tise organizational diversity programmes online.
The objectives of these initiatives reflect two dif-
ferent, underlying perspectives (Ely and Thomas,
2001; Van Knippenberg, Homan and Van Ginkel,
2013). First, from a fairness perspective, na-
tionality diversity management strives to create
a discrimination-free, fair diversity climate. Sec-
ond, from a competitiveness perspective, diversity
constitutes an asset that enhances performance.
Thus, we focus on diversity climate and enhanced
performance, representing indicators of successful
nationality diversity management.
© 2015 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
Nationality Diversity Management 629
Critical debates concerning diversity manage-
ment practices have evolved in the British Journal
of Management: Lorbiecki and Jack(2000) warned
that diversity management may in fact stabilize
status dierences between the privilegedgroup and
minorities, and Oswick and Noon (2014) found
striking similarities between diversity management
approaches and superficial management fashions,
such that organizations’ rhetoric commitments
to diversity are not accompanied by adequate
practices (Tatli, 2011). Even if diversity initia-
tives are implemented, their eectiveness varies
considerably across empirical studies (Bezrukova,
Jehn and Spell, 2012; Paluck, 2006). Thus, schol-
ars have called for a better integration of the
organizational context in order to understand
the mechanics of successful nationality diversity
management (Herdman and McMillan-Capehart,
2010; Homan et al., 2015). Given these critical
evaluations of organizational practices, we adopt
Rink and Ellemer’s (2007) idea thatemployees can
recognize diversity as part of their organizational
identity when they experience team diversity as a
valuable asset for accomplishing team tasks (see
also Ely and Thomas, 2001). They advocate a
bottom-up approach to diversity management,
which implements diversity-enhancing norms at
the team level rather than imposing top-down
initiatives. Following this bottom-up approach,
we draw from the categorization–elaboration
model (Van Knippenberg, De Dreu and Homan,
2004) to identify boundary conditions that enable
organizations to shape employees’ team-level
experiences with nationality diversity and thereby
influence diversity climate perceptions and team
performance. In particular, we focus on task and
leader characteristics, which are likely to influence
whetherteamssuerorbenefitfromnationality
diversity (Greer et al., 2012; Homan and Greer,
2013; Homan and Jehn, 2010).
First, we argue that task interdependence, which
requires close cooperation and functional team
processes, provides the basis for diversity to un-
fold its eects on diversity climate perceptionsand
team performance (Joshi and Roh, 2009; Kossek,
Zonia and Young, 1996; Rink and Ellemers, 2007).
However, task interdependence by itself does not
necessarily instigate favourable team processes
(Somech, Desivilya and Lidogoster, 2009; Tim-
merman, 2000). As such, we propose that the
direction of the eects of nationality diversity un-
der high task interdependence will be contingent
upon team leaders’ cultural intelligence (Groves
and Feyerherm, 2011). Culturally intelligent lead-
ers will possess the necessary attitudes and skills to
prevent negative eects due to adverse social cate-
gorization processes and to unlock the positivepo-
tential of the dierent perspectives represented in
nationally diverse teams (Ely and Thomas, 2001;
Milliken and Martins,1996; Van Knippenberg, De
Dreu and Homan, 2004).
By integrating the current insights on diversity
eects and cultural intelligence we aim to further
develop the current state of the art knowledge
on nationality diversity management. We propose
that a double-contingency model, which simulta-
neously takes into account task and leader char-
acteristics, helps to explain the lack of consistent
positive eects of nationality management initia-
tives (Bezrukova, Jehn and Spell, 2012; Herdman
and McMillan-Capehart, 2010; Paluck, 2006). In
this vein, task interdependence is needed to create
a context in which the implications of nationality
diversity for team interactions and processes are
salient. Moreover, we propose that diversity man-
agement benefits from an expertise perspective, i.e.
team leaders need to understand the particular-
ities of nationality diversity in order to manage
them successfully. In sum, we oer a comprehen-
sive team-level approach to nationality diversity
management, and link this approach to team per-
formance as well as the development of a positive
team diversity climate. Finally, we provide practi-
cal recommendations aboutwhen and how nation-
ality diversity needs to be managed.
The categorization–elaboration model
of diversity
Diversity refers to dierences in a group concern-
ing an attribute on which people can dier from
or resemble each other (Van Knippenberg and
Schippers, 2007). Nationality is prone to serve as
such an attribute (Stahl et al., 2010). Easily ob-
servable surface-level characteristics (e.g. names,
physical appearance or language accents) as well
as deep-level dierences in cultural values, includ-
ing heuristics about appropriate work behaviour
(e.g. Hofstede, 1980; House et al., 2002), increase
the salience of dierent nationalities in teams (Van
Knippenberg, De Dreu and Homan, 2004).
Research on diversity has reported inconsistent
findings, such that meta-analyses were unable to
© 2015 British Academy of Management.
To continue reading
Request your trial