Redundant Heterogeneity and Group Performance

Although diversity provides teams with a variety of advantages, the diversity–performance connection is not always positive. This paper identifies three performance issues that naturally result from diversity and suggests a potential solution for each of them. First, the positive effects associated with diversity often decay over time, in part because heterogeneous people may homogenize with repeated exposure. Second, diverse groups are fragile and experience higher turnover than nondiverse groups. Recruiting similar (redundant) pairs within a heterogeneous group can solve these two problems but also gives rise to a third: fault-line fragmentation. We propose a different structural solution: redundant heterogeneity (RH), in which not only are team members heterogeneous within a hierarchical level of a group or organization but their diversity is matched by similar critical team member characteristics at other hierarchical levels. Thus, we suggest that organizations and teams can take maximal advantage of diversity when each of their hierarchical subgroups are similarly diverse on the same critical dimensions. Analyses of 23 years of panel data from the National Basketball Association provided a first test of the effectiveness of this solution. We focused on professional players’ experience with a particular style of play in their college careers as the critical dimension of diversity within these teams. Our findings indicate that RH led to better performance, for three reasons. First, the positive effect of heterogeneity among teams’ core players on team performance decays more slowly for teams with RH; second, teams with RH are less negatively affected by turnover among core players; and third, teams with RH exhibited more coordination and cooperation. The discussion section suggests how and why other types of teams and organizations can benefit from redundant heterogeneity.