Aligning Differences: Discursive Diversity and Team Performance

How does cognitive diversity in a group affect its performance? Prior research suggests that poses performance tradeoff: Diverse groups excel at creativity and innovation, but struggle to take coordinated action. Building on the insight cognition is not static, instead dynamically interactively produced, we introduce construct of discursive diversity, manifestation which reflects degree meanings conveyed by members given set interactions diverge from one another. We propose high-performing teams are ones have collective capacity modulate shared match changing task requirements: They exhibit higher when engaged ideational tasks lower performing coordination tasks. further argue exhibiting congruent modulation—that is, those with low group-level variance members’ within-person semantic shifts requirements—are more likely experience success than characterized incongruent modulation. Using tools computational linguistics derive measure drawing novel longitudinal data intragroup electronic communications outcomes for 117 remote software development an online platform ( www.gigster.com ), find support our theory. Our findings suggest tradeoff inescapable: Groups can navigate it aligning their levels requirements having stay aligned another as they make these adjustments. This paper was accepted Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, organizations. Funding: Financial fromthe NSF-CAREER [Grant 1847091] gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: Data available https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4274 .