Learning and Performance in Multidisciplinary Teams: The Importance of Collective Team Identification

In multidisciplinary teams in the oil and gas industry, we examined expertise diversity's relationship with team learning and team performance under varying levels of collective team identification. In teams with low collective identification, expertise diversity was negatively related to team learning and performance; where team identification was high, those relationships were positive. Results also supported nonlinear relationships between expertise diversity and both team learning and performance. Finally, team learning partially mediated the linear and nonlinear relationships between diversity and performance. Findings broaden understanding of the process by which and the conditions under which expertise diversity may promote team performance.