Abstract:
Scientific teams are increasingly diverse in discipline, organizational affiliation and demographics. Diversity has been found to be a driver of innovation but also can be a source of interpersonal friction. Drawing on a mixed-method study of 22 scientific working groups, this paper presents evidence that team diversity has a positive impact on scientific output (i.e., journal papers and citations) through the mediation of the novelty of the collaborative process as evidenced by publishing in and citing more diverse sources. Ironically however these factors also seem to be related to lower team member satisfaction. Qualitative data suggests additional factors are important to enable collaboration, such as trust and leadership. The findings have implications for team design and management, specifically that team diversity seems beneficial but that the process of integration can be difficult and needs management to lead to a productive and innovative process.
Biography of Speaker:
Kevin Crowston is a Distinguished Professor of Information Science in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. He received his Ph.D. (1991) in Information Technologies from the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
His research examines new ways of organizing made possible by the extensive use of information and communications technology. Specific research topics include the development practices of Free/Libre Open Source Software teams and work practices and technology support for citizen science research projects, both with NSF support. His most recent project is a research coordination network on Work in the Age of Intelligent Machines.
He is currently Editor-in-Chief for the journals ACM Transaction on Social Computing Information, Technology & People
