2009.The role of context in work team diversity research: A meta-analytic review

Integrating macro and micro theoretical perspectives, we conducted a meta-analysis examining the role of contextual factors in team diversity research. Using data from 8,757 teams in 39 studies conducted in organizational settings, we examined whether contextual factors at multiple levels, including industry, occupation, and team, influ-enced the performance outcomes of relations-oriented and task-oriented diversity. The direct effects were very small yet significant, and after we accounted for industry, occupation, and team-level contextual moderators, they doubled or tripled in size. Further, occupation- and industry-level moderators explained significant variance in effect sizes across studies. Research in the area of work team diversity has grown exponentially in the last four decades. How-ever, several comprehensive reviews have noted that the findings in this area do not provide a clear consensus regarding the performance effects o