Embracing multicultural tensions: How team members’ multicultural paradox mindsets foster team information elaboration and creativity

Pier Vittorio Mannucci and Christina E. Shalley

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2022, vol. 173, issue C

Abstract: We explore why teams with the same level of cultural diversity can differ in their level of creativity. To this end, we introduce the concept of paradox mindsets to research on multicultural teams. We argue that team members with a high multicultural paradox mindset are accepting of and energized by intercultural tensions, both emphasizing cultural differences and finding common ground. Their presence thus enables multicultural teams to embrace these tensions and leverage their cultural diversity toward team creativity. Specifically, we hypothesize that teams with members that have a high multicultural paradox mindset are more creative because these members promote information elaboration at the team level, which in turn fosters creativity. We test our hypotheses in a study of 217 individuals randomly assigned to 63 culturally diverse teams. Results provide support for our overarching theory.

Keywords: Multicultural teams; Creativity; Paradoxes; Multicultural mindsets; Information elaboration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597822000802
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:173:y:2022:i:c:s0749597822000802

DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2022.104191

Access Statistics for this article

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes is currently edited by John M. Schaubroeck

More articles in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().