Team emotion diversity and performance: The moderating role of social class homogeneity

Abstract

Team members can experience a range of emotions and to varying degrees. We examine the effects of team emotion diversity on information sharing among team members and, consequently, team performance. By integrating the categorization elaboration model and self-categorization theory, we argue that social class diversity moderates the relationship between team emotion diversity and information sharing. Specifically, we propose that team emotion diversity elicits information sharing when social class homogeneity is high but hinders information sharing when social class homogeneity is low. In addition, we hypothesize that the relationship between information sharing and team performance will be stronger for teams with more, rather than less, social class diversity. To test our propositions, we studied 75 teams enrolled in an Indian master of business administration program, collecting measures of positive and negative affect, information sharing, and team performance at multiple times. Our results mostly support our predictions. We discuss the implications of these findings for team diversity research and for managing diverse teams.