Leveraging E-Identities: The Impact of Percieved Diversity on Team Social Integration and Performance

Abstract

Virtual teams (VTs) are increasingly being employed by organizations, presenting managers and researchers with challenges that collocated teams do not face. VTs are likely to be diverse and lack opportunities to readily communicate personal information to build relationships. Research on team diversity shows mixed results regarding the impact of diversity on team integration and performance, with both positive and negative impacts observed. This study asks the question: Can we minimize the negative impact of perceived deep-level diversity on performance while still leveraging the benefits of actual deep-level diversity? We examine how technology can be used to influence perceptions of deep-level diversity in order to attenuate the negative impact of diversity. Results show that diversity in general, deep-level, attributes can be influenced via the use of eidentity profiles, providing support for the idea that we can minimize social tension due to deep-level diversity, while still reaping the benefits from actual diversity.