Guest speaker in this week’s SWE colloquium series is Bertolt Meyer, Director of the Institute of Psychology, TU Chemnitz.

Team fault lines: A meta analysis

Fault lines are hypothetical dividing lines splitting a social group into relatively homogeneous subgroups based on the distribution of several demographic attributes. Given their theoretical ties with classic theories and concepts from social psychology (e.g., self-categorisation theories) ans sociology (e.g., intersectionality), Fault lines have received widespread scientific attention over the past two decades. However, a comprehensive meta analysis on their effects on performance and team processing is missing. To fill this lacuna, we conducted a meta-analysis over 94 (k) studies from 87 papers with a total sample size (N) of 6,151 teams. We find general support for the negative association between fault lines and team performance. Demographic, deep-level, and perceived fault lines were negatively associated with performance; however, informational and mixed fault lines are not significantly associated with performance. The negative relationship between fault lines and performance is found to occur through high levels of task and relationship conflict and through low levels of team cohesion and team identity. We describe the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for advancing the study of fault lines.