دیدگاه های مختلف: اثرات متعدد از تنوع سطح عمیق بر خلاقیت گروهی

Although generally accepted in the literature on group diversity, the view that groups can improve their creativity by drawing on the diverse perspectives of group members has received surprisingly limited examination or empirical support. This paper considers the role of deep level diversity in group creativity, highlighting that while deep diversity may improve divergent processes in groups, it may also hamper groups' ability to converge around creative ideas. Two experimental studies demonstrate that deep level diversity leads to less creatively elaborated and integrated ideas. In addition, the studies revealed that when groups must converge around a single output, the challenges of deep level diversity outweigh the benefits of divergent idea generation. A detailed analysis of the interactions of 27 groups finds that this effect occurs because deep diversity changes a group's creative process. This study contributes to our understanding of the creative process in groups with detailed analysis of video-taped group interactions. It challenges the assumed advantages of deep level diversity to group creativity, and suggests that the brainstorming process that groups are typically advised to use to promote creativity may not be the best way to develop creative final output.

Researchers traditionally advocate that to be creative, teams should be composed of members with different knowledge, experiences, and therefore perspectives on the group task (e.g., Bantel and Jackson, 1989, Brophy, 1998 and Cox and Blake, 1991). Evidence suggests that diversity in underlying perspectives (that is, deep level diversity; Harrison et al., 1998 and Phillips and Loyd, 2006), creates individual and group processes associated with divergent thinking (Milliken et al., 2003, Nemeth, 1986 and Pelled, 1996). Specifically, diverse groups have an advantage over homogeneous groups or individuals at divergent thinking because novel ideas can result when one group members' idea stimulates a novel connection in another's associative hierarchy (Collins and Loftus, 1975, Guilford, 1950, Nemeth, 1986 and Paulus and Yang, 2000). An associative hierarchy is a mental representation of relationships between concepts (Mednick, 1962). The more diverse a group in terms of the variety of underlying perspectives, the more diverse the associative network of the group, so the more novel the responses that can be made to a particular stimulus (Mednick, 1962 and Simonton, 1999). These deep level differences in underlying perspective may come from, for example, group members' educational background, extensive functional experience in an organization, or other factors that are relevant to the group task. This idea underlies much research on group creativity and group diversity (see Harrison and Klein, 2007, Mannix and Neale, 2005, Milliken and Martins, 1996, Van Knippenberg and Schippers, 2007 and Williams and O'Reilly, 1998; for reviews). Although deep diversity is expected to benefit group creativity in this way, empirical research provides inconsistent results (e.g., Ancona and Caldwell, 1992 and Muira and Hida, 2004; Watson, Kumar, & Michaelsen, 1993). For example, groups whose members have diverse knowledge categories can produce more original ideas (Rietzschel, Nijstad, & Stroebe, 2007) and groups with members from different ethnic backgrounds can produce higher quality ideas (McLeod, Lobel, & Cox, 1996). In contrast, the creativity of organizational groups has been found to be lower when members have different functional perspectives on the task (Ancona and Caldwell, 1992, Bercovitz and Feldman, 2008 and Lovelace et al., 2001). One explanation for these mixed results is that groups can benefit from a variety of perspectives as long as members' views are not in opposition (Harrison & Klein, 2007). However, as noted above, even diversity in functional background, which is expected to create variety rather than opposition in underlying perspectives (Harrison & Klein, 2007), does not always lead to higher levels of creativity. An alternative explanation for the effect of deep diversity on group creativity is that, while it leads to improved divergent thinking in group members and therefore more creative divergent output, it impairs the ability of groups to build on and combine ideas, which also requires some convergence between group members. To date, limited research has examined how convergent processes help groups to generate creative output by building on and combining one another's ideas (for an exception, see Kohn, Paulus, & Choi, 2011). This is surprising because these processes are recognized as essential for creativity (Finke et al., 1992, Mumford and Gustafson, 1988, Osborn, 1953, Rietzschel, De Dreu and Nijstad, 2007 and Rietzschel, Nijstad and Stroebe, 2007) and emerging research suggests that groups have difficulty identifying and converging around their most creative ideas (Putman and Paulus, 2009, Rietzschel et al., 2006 and Rietzschel et al., 2010). In the present paper, I introduce the term convergent creativity to describe a creative process in groups that involves both generating and elaborating new ideas, which are traditionally described as divergent thinking, and the ability and willingness of group members to recognize, appreciate, and therefore build on and combine one another's ideas. I suggest that although deep diversity may improve divergent thinking, it can also interfere with a group's ability to engage in convergent creativity; that is, to build on and combine ideas