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Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N., & Malone, T. W. (2010). Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups. Science, 330(October), 686–688.

Psychologists have repeatedly shown that a single statistical factor—often called “general intelligence”—emerges from the correlations among people's performance on a wide variety of cognitive tasks. But no one has systematically examined whether a similar kind of “collective intelligence” exists for groups of people. In two studies with 699 individuals, working in groups of two to five, we find converging evidence of a general collective intelligence factor that explains a group's performance on a wide variety of tasks. This “c factor” is not strongly correlated with the average or maximum individual intelligence of group members but is correlated with the average social sensitivity of group members, the equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking, and the proportion of females in the group.

Joshi, A. (2014). By Whom and When Is Women’s Expertise Recognized? The Interactive Effects of Gender and Education in Science and Engineering Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 59(2), 202–239.

Using a round-robin data set assembled from over 60 teams of more than 500 scientists and engineers across a variety of science and engineering disciplines, as well as longitudinal research productivity data, this study examines differences in how men and women in science and engineering teams evaluate their colleagues’ expertise and how that affects team performance. Because these teams are assembled to enhance innovations, they are most productive if they fully utilize the expertise of all team members. Applying a social relations modeling approach, two studies conducted in multidisciplinary research centers in a large public U.S. university test whether a team’s gender composition predicts how well women’s expertise is used within the team, based on peer evaluations of male and female team members with varying education levels. A third study returns to the same two research centers to examine whether the larger context in which the team operates affects the use of expertise and the team’s productivity. An important finding is that the gender and educational attributes of the person being evaluated are less critical to the recognition of expertise than the attributes of the person conducting the evaluation and the relationship between these two team members. In addition, context matters: gender-integrated teams with a higher proportion of highly educated women are more productive in disciplines with a greater female faculty representation.

Haas, H. (2010). How can we explain mixed effects of diversity on team performance? A review with emphasis on context. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 29(5), 458–490.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address the still unresolved issue of explaining the mixed diversity effects on team performance found in empirical research. A special focus is on context factors that have remained systematically unexplored with regard to their potential moderating role.

Design/methodology/approach
This review thoroughly analyses 30 empirical studies on direct diversity‐performance effects. Information on team context is collected and compared according to diversity type and its relationship with performance. As meta‐analyses and narrative reviews provide contradicting evidence, empirical studies are evaluated in terms of regression results as well as correlation coefficients.

Findings
The comparison of regression and correlation results finds contradictions concerning the trend towards positive or negative relationships. Context factors with moderating potential are discovered for some of the tested diversity variables. Reported curvilinear relationships seem to be responsible for non‐significant outcomes of linear analyses.

Research limitations/implications
This review is limited as it only includes studies on direct relationships of diversity and performance whereas work on the link of diversity and team processes is not considered. Empirical diversity studies in the future should include more detailed information on context factors, especially descriptive data of the sample population. New research in this field should furthermore test whether non‐linear relationships exist as they might be the cause for non‐significant linear relationships.

Originality/value
This paper provides valuable insights for researchers investigating the impact of diversity on team performance as it highlights the importance of descriptive context information and potential moderating variables.

Díaz-García, C., González-Moreno, A., & Sáez-Martínez, F. J. (2013). Gender diversity within R&D teams: Its impact on radicalness of innovation. Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice, 15(2), 149–160.

Literature on diversity in organisations is limited and even fewer studies investigate its impact on innovation. Therefore, the aim of this research is to study how gender diversity within R&D teams, among other factors, impacts innovation, drawing on data from an innovation survey in Spain. Our findings support the assertion that gender diversity within R&D teams generates certain dynamics that foster novel solutions leading to radical innovation. The results indicate that gender diversity is positively related to radical innovation. However it does not promote incremental innovation in the same way. The positive relation occurs under particular conditions of the task (a higher degree of novelty), as the two types of innovation might require different skills for their effective performance. These results have several implications for academics, politicians and practitioners.