The impacts of diversity on team innovation and the moderating effects of cooperative team culture

ABSTRACT

Previous research has paid little attention to both the main and moderating variables which have effects on innovation in public organizations. This study analyzes not only the impact of surface- and deep-level diversity but also the moderating effects of cooperative team culture on team innovation. For the study, we collected data from 360 teams within 25 district offices in Seoul. The finding reveals that value diversity has a negative effect on team innovation. In other words, as the level of value diversity increases, that of team innovation decreases. The most important finding of the study is that cooperative team culture has a moderating effect on the relationship between diversity variables and team innovation. This means that the effects of diversity variables on team innovation are larger when cooperative team culture is stronger.

KEYWORDS:

• Cooperative team culture
• deep-level diversity
• innovation
• South Korea
• surface-level diversity

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. According to the 2018 Statistical Yearbook published by the Korean Ministry of Personnel Management, the number of female employees working for the central government has steadily increased from 49.4% in 2015 and 49.8% in 2016, to 50.2% in 2017.

2. A district office in South Korea generally has 5–6 bureaus, and at the level below each bureau there are usually 5–7 divisions. There are also 4–5 teams within each division. The teams follow the directions and work under the supervision of their division and bureau. Their work largely consists of administrative support, budgeting, provision of citizen welfare services, urban & environmental planning, and transportation & public safety management. Each team leader and the members of each team generally undergo job rotation every two years in order to learn diverse skills and perform a variety of tasks.

3. As a reference point, there are 25 district offices in the Seoul.

4. The survey items were completed by the team leader of each team. Although it would have been desirable for all team members to complete the survey, practical considerations made this impossible.

5. The official retirement age of South Korean public employees is 60.

6. Among the sample, there were 46 team members who had only received a high school diploma (3.5%) among the total of 1,321 members across all the teams. Had we omitted these 46 members in the measurement of knowledge diversity in terms of the categories based on college or university majors, the number of members of each team and the number of team members categorized according to their majors would have been mismatched. To eliminate this inconsistency, we included a high school diploma as a category of major in order to measure the level of knowledge diversity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jongho Roh

Jongho Roh is an associate professor in the department of public administration at Seoul National University of Science & Technology. His research interests include public management, human resource management, and public policy. He has published articles in Social Science Quarterly, State Politics & Policy Quarterly, and Public Personnel Management.

Jun Koo

Jun Koo is a professor in the department of public administration at Korea University. His research interests include urban and regional development, industry cluster, and innovation policy. He has published articles in American Review of Public Administration, Journal of urban Affairs, and Academy of Management Journal.