If we cannot now close our differences.

If we cannot now close our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

- John F Kennedy

In the past decade, demographic diversity has become united of the foremost topics of interest to managers and management scholars. The limit demographic diversity refers to the order to which a unit (eg a work dispose or organization) is heterogeneous with notice to demographic attributes. Attributes classified as demographic generally include "immutable characteristics so as age, gender, and ethnicity; attributes that describe individuals' relationships with organizations, like as organizational tenure or functional area; and attributes that identify individuals' positions within society, as it is as marital status" (Lawrence, 1997: 11) The heightened regard with demographic diversity (hereafter referr to simply as diversity) shoots not only from the growing vicinity of women and minorities in the work force (Buhler 1997) still also from modern organizational strategies that require more interaction among employee of different functional backgrounds (eg Dean and Snell 1991) common of the most significant bodies of research to arise from this stretch is a stream of field studies linking assign places to composition to cognitive task performance - i.e., performance forward tasks that involve generating plans or creative ideas, solving riddles or making decisions. The impact of diversity in succession cognitive task performance has been examined in studies of top management teams (eg Bantel and Jackson, 1989; Murray, 1989; Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven 1990) and lower-level work assign places tos (e.g., Kent and McGrath, 1969; Murnighan and Conlon 1991)

Despite this spotlight forward diversity in work groups, there is more to be done. Investigations of diversity and work cluster performance have largely been what Lawrence (1997) referr to as "black box" studies, which do not measure intervening proces variables. Further, the efficiencys on performance are still unclear. any studies (e.g., Bantel and Jackson, 1989) have linked diversity to favorable performance onward cognitive tasks, and some (eg Murnighan and Conlon 1991) have linked it to unfavorable performance onward such tasks. Others (e.g., Watson, Kumar, and Michaelson, 1993) have shown that arrange diversity both enhances and diminishes cognitive task performance. To capture abundantly the complex relationship between work arrange diversity and performance, we ne more sophisticated theories and empirical work incorporating intervening variables and multiple originals of diversity. The objective of the popular investigation is to begin to come together these needs, offering an intervening proces theory - the same that attempts to untangle the complicated plant of relationships among five emblems of diversity and performance - and providing a example of that theory.

pair prior studies that have empirically assessed whether proces variables intervene between dispose diversity and performance are particularly important to our efforts. Ancona and Caldwell (1992) examined the intervening part of internal task process (i.e., the setting of goals and priorities) and external communication. Later, Smith et al.'s (1994) top management team subject of attention looked at three potential intervening variables (social integration, informality of communication, and communication frequency) The authors of as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but studies discovered that the proces variables they measured did not to the full explain the observed effects of diversity forward performance, and both then intimateed that the mediating effect of conflict should be assessed in time to come research. Hence, in the original we propose and test here, conflict plays an intervening role

The example proposes that work group diversity indirectly affects cognitive task performance between the walls of two kinds of conflict: intragroup task conflict and intragroup emotional conflict. Task conflict is a condition in which assign places to members disagree about task issues, including goals, tonic decision areas, procedures, and the appropriate choice for action, and emotional conflict is a condition in which collection members have interpersonal clashes characterized by the agency of anger, frustration, and other negative feelings (Jehn 1994; Eisenhardt, Kahwajy, and Bourgeois, 1997a).(1) We remind of that job-related types of diversity largely drive task conflict. In contrast, emotional conflict is shaped by way of a complex web of diversity prototypes that increase emotional conflict based upon stereotyping and decrease emotional conflict based forward social comparison. Task routineness and assemblage longevity moderate these diversity-conflict relationships. Each representation of diversity indirectly affects performance via its relationship with conflict: task conflict minds to enhance performance, while emotional conflict serves to diminish performance. Thus, we show a model that postulates that the black chest between diversity and performance contains a more elaborate station of relationships than previously thought

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES

Link between Diversity and Task Conflict