Diversity and Information Processing in Teams: A Combinative View

This paper brings together three streams of research concerning diversity-related performance of groups: team diversity research, complexity science, and the social network perspective. Empirical research in team diversity produces contradictory results about the effects of cognitive diversity on team performance in terms of information processing capabilities. This is why we propose to complement this research with the theoretical perspectives provided by complexity science and social network theory. The paper gives a brief review of diversity research regarding benefits and problems of diversity for team information processing. We then refer to theoretical insights from complex adaptive systems concerning diversity in networks of information processing agents, with a focus on Boolean networks. On the edge of chaos, a state that describes a specific fit between network density and diversity, these systems exhibit maximum information processing capacity. We show that these insights correspond with findings from social network theory. We conclude that complexity science as a structural (meta-)theory can help to reveal the circumstances under which team diversity in terms of differences in information processing can foster team performance. Finally, implications for further research are identified.