Diversity and the innovative behaviour of teams in South African corporations

Abstract

South Africa is an emerging economy with a heterogeneous population. As South African organisations undergo transformation to address imbalances of the past, management teams are becoming increasingly diverse. The impact of this on innovative behaviour, an important enabler of growth, has become a critical factor to understand. The purpose of this study was to develop an understanding of the manner in which diversity affects the innovative behaviour of business management teams in South African corporations. Based on such understanding, the objective was to produce a conceptual framework that explains how innovative behaviour is affected by management team diversity and other relevant factors relating to team structure, composition and context. A multiple case-study design was adopted to enable both analytic depth and generalisation. Teams from a number of different South African corporations were selected for detailed study. A grounded theory building approach was used to allow for the emergence of important themes. Detailed narrative descriptions were generated for each team from on-site interviews held with team members. This was followed by within-case analysis for each team and an integrated cross-case analysis, leading to theory building. The findings are appraised with reference to the current body of knowledge. The primary theoretical contribution of this study has been the highlighting of numerous areas related to innovative behaviour which have not been well researched, including the impact of informal dyad interactions on the discussion and debate within teams and the role of the leader as innovation initiator. These findings should serve as a guide for future team-based innovation research. An important finding was the dynamic nature and flexible composition of management teams, which can lead to spontaneous changes in team diversity and thereby affect the perspectives, knowledge and experience available in a team, even during the course of a single innovation project, The conceptual framework developed on the basis of this research takes account of this flexibility in team structure and can serve as a guide for future research on innovative behaviour in management teams, in general.