Diversity and Team Communication: A Critical Review and Call for Broadened Representation

The chapter provides a brief review of team diversity research from its roots in group composition and workforce demographics through recent trends toward dynamic multilevel models. The divergence from this research area's early motivations in social justice and inclusion to a primarily economic motivation is highlighted. The chapter also reviews major theories that have been used to explain diversity effects in team interactions and outcomes. The review leads to a discussion of three broad critiques of mainstream diversity research, namely a predominance of US cultural outlook, a narrow disciplinary base in organization sciences and psychology, and inadequate attention and overly simplistic perspective on communication processes. The chapter ends with implications for team diversity research and a discussion of how the suggestions can be applied to emerging dimensions of diversity.