Abstract:

With further economic globalization and fast development of global companies, more firms have teams with diversified cultural backgrounds. Managers expect employees with different cultural backgrounds to contribute their experience, ideas and perspectives to team innovation. Thus, both the academia and the industry are paying great attention on how team cultural diversity would impact team innovation. In this research, based on the “categorization-elaboration” theory perspective, we further clarify the theoretical framework of team cultural diversity, examine the impact of team cultural diversity on team innovation, its underlying mechanism and the boundary conditions from the teams’ internal and external factors respectively. In practice, this study provides companies with guidelines to effectively manage teams with diversified cultures and promote innovation.

Key words: team cultural diversity, team innovation, diversity belief, collective regulatory focus, team innovation feedback