PSYCHOLOGY MASTER'S THESIS ABSTRACT

Corinne Quan

Industrial/Organizational
December 1991

Cultural Diversity and Teams
 

    Few team-building strategies have attended to ethnic diversity in the organization and its consequences for teams.  The purpose of this thesis was to examine the rating of values “independence and social recognition” and to measure individualism vs. collectivism for Asian-Americans and European-Americans.  Also, the relationship of rankings on the individual or collective dimension to the individual’s experience working on a team was investigated.  The results indicated that team type, homogeneous or mixed, affected cohesion and expressiveness of the team. European-Americans felt more cohesive and expressive in a culturally homogeneous team than when in a mixed team.  Asian-Americans reported being more expressive in a homogeneous team than in a mixed team.  There were no value differences in individualism vs. collectivism.  These findings were discussed in relation to the nature of the hypotheses, the measures, the subjects and future research.

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