Cultural Diversity in Military Teams: Which Factors Influence Effectiveness?

Abstract

To investigate whether cultural diversity in military teams enhances or decreases team effectiveness, taking into account different measures of cultural diversity, and controlling for team factors such as leadership, involvement and social support. Military (N = 89) who were currently deployed in a multinational team completed an online questionnaire. The impact of cultural diversity on team effectiveness is very small. Different aspects of cultural diversity (e.g., differences in norms and values, or diversity in nationalities) do not affect team effectiveness. The only aspect of cultural diversity that influenced team effectiveness is diversity in religion. This effect disappears however, when controlled for relationship-related leadership and the team factors involvement and social support. Cultural diversity only plays a minor role in explaining team effectiveness. More important are team factors.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 2008
Accession Number
ADA494135

Entities

People

  • D. A. Van Hemert
  • I. M. Wetzer

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Behavioral Sciences
  • Classification
  • Cultural Diversity
  • Electronic Mail
  • Ethnic Groups
  • Families (Human)
  • Leadership
  • Military Personnel
  • Military Psychology
  • Minority Groups
  • Psychological Phenomena And Processes
  • Psychology
  • Questionnaires
  • Regression Analysis
  • Religion
  • Social Psychology
  • Surveys

Readers

  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • Organizational Process Management (OPM).
  • Systems Analysis and Design