With whom you elaborate matters: how learning orientation impacts cross-culture and same-culture information elaboration in culturally diverse teams

Abstract

Abstract Work teams are increasingly characterized by diverse cultural backgrounds. Although research has established that cultural diversity holds the potential to enhance team performance through information elaboration—the exchange, discussion, and integration of task-relevant information—prior work has treated elaboration as an undifferentiated process, leaving unspecified whether it occurs across or within cultural boundaries. We develop a differentiated elaboration perspective that distinguishes cross-culture information elaboration between culturally dissimilar members from same-culture information elaboration between culturally similar members. Using a multi-source, multi-wave study of 104 culturally diverse teams comprising 587 members, we found that, as expected, cross-culture elaboration was more strongly related to team performance than same-culture elaboration. Moreover, team learning orientation predicted both forms of elaboration, and its indirect association with team performance was stronger through cross-culture elaboration. These findings advance a differentiated elaboration perspective to demonstrate that elaboration that crosses cultural boundaries is more important for diverse teams than same-culture elaboration. This points to opportunities for future research on reaping the benefits of diverse teams.