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How does religious diversity impact team performance?
I am doing a group project on Management class and there is not much information on this topic. We have 4 people in group and their parts are age, culture, gender. Mine is religion, religion's impact on teamwork, that's team performance. Thanks for the answer.
Public Comments
- To state it in absolutes like "religious diversity is bad/good for team performance" isn't a good way to go. It's simplistic thinking that you could almost say doesn't qualify as thinking at all. But that being said... If the goal is achieving a clear objective then the prevailing wisdom is that all members of the group being on the same page philosophically speaking (religion, country, culture, politics) creates a unified force that can move as one. There is a strong argument for this view. It can't be easily discounted. I would say that even when diversity is present on a team, the key to overcoming the divisiveness of it is to focus on the commonalities not the differences. Such as saying "Okay, we all have different views of some things in the bible but we can all agree that there is a single God over it all." That kind of thing. And finding that thing that the group can agree on is fundamental to letting the group function effectively. The compromise that is reached in doing so helps each member of the group to feel the group serves their beliefs and enables them to support the groups actions.
- Rather than a complete answer, here's a potential starting point. I have concluded that team performance is something to do with competences in visualization, organization, collaboration and contribution for team success. The performance of a religiously diverse team will be impacted according to the degree to which the values of the traditions represented in the team can be used to support these competencies. The same is true for differences in age, culture and gender. I suspect there is "not much on this topic" because there is not too much to be learned from generalizations. What you need it a case study! To get to the specifics for religion, try turning your "group" into a team! Explore everyone's religious affiliation and see how each supports visualization, organization, collaboration and contribution for team success. Good luck.
