The Effects of Task Characteristics on the Performance of Multicultural Teams

Connecting Economic Theory and Empirical Evidence

Abstract

Based on a model from personnel economics, we propose two hypotheses: H1 Multicultural teams will outperform monocultural teams if the task requires multicultural skills, and H2 Monocultural teams will outperform multicultural teams if the task does not require any culture-specific skills. We tested these hypotheses using six empirical studies by authors who are invested in the area of multicultural team performance evaluation (Earley and Mosakowski, 2000; Elron, 1997; McLeod, Lobel and Cox, 1996; Watson, Johnson, and Merritt, 1998; Watson, Kumar, and Michaelsen; 1993). Surprisingly, neither of the studies investigated the relationship between the nature of the task - whether monocultural or multicultural - and the performance of a team - whether monocultural or multicultural. We found that three studies support H1 (McLeod, Lobel and Cox, 1996; Elron, 1997; Watson, Johnson, and Merritt, 1998), and three studies support H2 (Watson, Kumar, and Michaelsen, 1993; Thomas 1999; Watson, Johnson, and Merritt, 1998). The study by Earley and Mosakowski (2000) does not seem to relate to our hypotheses. We end with implications for existing theory and future research.