Rags and Riches: The Effects of Social Class Diversity on Team Viability

Abstract

Social class inequality is growing at a record pace. What happens when individuals from different social classes work on the same team? We examined the direct and moderating influences of social class as an underexplored form of diversity on team viability in 132 student project teams. Guided by an overarching framework from the team diversity literature, we explored perspective taking and conflict resolution norms as moderators that may safeguard against the negative effects of social class diversity on team viability. As predicted, teams with a mix of higher and lower social class members who were less able to see their teammates’ points of view or develop open conflict resolution norms reported less desire to work together in the future. Given these promising results and the ongoing importance of social class inequality in organizations, future research should continue to examine social class in a team context.

Keywords

social class team diversity team viability

Today, the richest 10% of the world’s population have incomes 10 times higher than the poorest 10% (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2015). These disparities are not only rapidly widening but are also hardening. “Rags to riches” stories are the exception rather than the rule (Corcoran, 1995), as the chance of a child in the United States moving from the lowest wealth quintile to the highest is only four4% (Urhan, 2012). Further, the effects of social class (one’s perceived relative standing within society based on resources) are both strong and residual in shaping how individuals view themselves in the world (Kraus et al., 2011) and over their lifespan (Kraus et al., 2012). Therefore, individuals who transition from poverty to affluence have a difficult time adjusting to their new environment and may fail as a result (Chetty et al., 2017; Jury et al., 2017; Martin & Côté, 2019). Responding to these trends, management researchers and practitioners have underscored social class inequalities as a grand challenge (Banks et al., 2016).

Organizational science research has demonstrated that social class affects key workplace outcomes, including risk taking (Kish-Gephart & Campbell, 2015), decision making (Shafir, 2017), prosocial behavior (Kraus & Callaghan, 2016), ethical behavior (Trautmann et al., 2013), job search intensity (DeOrtentiis et al., 2022), and leadership emergence (Barling & Weatherhead, 2016). However, studies on social class have mostly been conducted at the individual level of analysis (Côté, 2011; Loignon & Woehr, 2018), with little attention directed to workgroups. This omission is regrettable because social class disparities are likely to be a reality in organizational teams due to their prevalence and increasing trajectory (Urhan, 2012). In addition, many individual-level social class results are likely to have important implications for team-level emergent states, processes, and outcomes. For lower class individuals, increased difficulty making long-term decisions (Shafir, 2017) and reduced leadership emergence in adulthood (Barling & Weatherhead, 2016) is likely to play out in teams when members need to step into vertical or shared leadership roles. Moreover, increased narcissism in adulthood for higher social class individuals (Martin et al., 2016) may have implications for team composition effects and may influence team processes such as conflict, communication, and back-up behaviors (e.g., Lynch et al., 2022).

According to a comprehensive review on social class in organizational sciences, “it would seem that social class may also be a relevant form of diversity within organizations and groups” because of the “compelling evidence that suggests social class functions much like a diffuse status characteristic or can be the basis of stigmatization” (Loignon & Woehr, 2018, p. 83). Unfortunately, social class remains a largely unexplored form of diversity in team research (Loignon & Woehr, 2018). This critical oversight is largely due to the emphasis on horizontal (focus on diversity) versus vertical (focus on inequality) types of heterogeneity in team diversity studies (Bunderson & Van der Vegt, 2018). Recent reviews of the team diversity literature have urged that future research give much needed attention to vertical differences (Bunderson & Van der Vegt, 2018) and the social structures of inequality in which team differences are embedded (Perry, 2021). Answering these calls, we investigated the direct and moderating influences of social class diversity (intra-team heterogeneity on social class). Given that low and high social class individuals enter teams with distinct backgrounds and perspectives (Stephens et al., 2014), what happens when they are required to work together interdependently?

Our research is grounded in an overarching theoretical framework based on a review of the team diversity literature emphasizing the importance of social integration as a broad outcome variable (Guillaume et al., 2017). As such, we investigate the relationship between social class diversity and team viability, a key but under-researched, proximal measure of team effectiveness describing team members’ desire to continue working together in the future (Bell & Marentette, 2011). In addition, because the primary conclusion of Guillaume et al. (2017) review was robust confirmation of the contingency perspective on team diversity effects, we also examine factors that may moderate the relationship between social class diversity and team viability. Guided by Guillaume et al. (2017) overarching framework, we selected one individual difference (perspective taking, the ability to put one’s self in another’s shoes) and one climate (including norms) variable (conflict resolution norms, unwritten rules concerning team members’ willingness and openness to quickly resolve conflict) that may safeguard against the negative effects of social class diversity on team viability. In addition to integrating distal and proximal variables, perspective taking captures what members bring to the team whereas conflict resolution norms illustrate how the team handles task contribution and interpersonal differences (Ilgen et al., 2005; Jehn & Mannix, 2001).

The current research contributes to the team diversity and social class literatures in three ways. First, this study expands the team diversity literature by investigating social class as an underexplored form of diversity that is both salient and relevant in teams. Extant diversity research has primarily focused on horizontal forms of heterogeneity such as demographic variables (e.g., Bell et al., 2011; Joshi, 2014) and personality traits (e.g., Bell, 2007), while overlooking vertical inequality such as social class (Bunderson & Van der Vegt, 2018). This oversight is unfortunate because “vertical differences are not only inevitable, as they are in virtually all teams, but are inherent in the structure and function of the team” (Bunderson & Van der Vegt, 2018, p. 49). Despite their prevalence and importance, however, a recent team diversity review focusing on top management teams identified only 6% or 11% of studies investigating vertical inequality, most of which focused on pay inequality (Bunderson & Van der Vegt, 2018). Seeking to remediate this deficiency, we draw attention to social class diversity as a key form of vertical inequality operating in teams.

Second, this study contributes to the social class literature by expanding from the predominant emphasis at the individual-level to the team level of analysis. Answering the call of a recent review of the social class literature to examine the overlooked topic of social class diversity (Loignon & Woehr, 2018), we investigate intra-team differences in perceived standing in a social hierarchy. In doing so, we explore how teams function when people from diverse social class backgrounds come together in teams to work interdependently.

Third, in addition to investigating the social class diversity-team viability relationship, we also examine the moderating effects by which this relationship holds. Doing so sharpens our understanding of the conditions under which social class diversity is more and less strongly related to members’ desire to continue working together. We therefore answer the call of reviews from both the social class (Bergman & Jean, 2016; Loignon & Woehr, 2018) and team diversity (Guillaume et al., 2017; Horwitz & Horwitz, 2007; van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007) literatures to adopt a contingency approach. Our choice of mean perspective taking and conflict resolution norms as moderators was informed by an overarching framework integrating team diversity moderators and findings highlighting the significance of individual differences and climate/norms across the team diversity literature (Guillaume et al., 2017). A subsequent team diversity review likewise concluded that team diversity is best understood when accounting for individual differences in combination with team emergent states (van Knippenberg & Mell, 2016). Mean perspective taking and conflict resolution norms capture what members contribute to the group (team composition) and dynamic team properties (emergent states), respectively.

Theoretical Background

Social Class

Social class is defined as a higher-order construct “representing an individual or group’s relative position in an economic-social-cultural hierarchy” (Diemer et al., 2013, p. 79). Focusing on the critical aspect of one’s subjective interpretation of their social class relative to others (Liu et al., 2004), subjective social class is defined as one’s concept of self that is established by resources such as income, occupational prestige, and education, as well as by perceptions of social rank compared to others (Côté, 2011; Kish-Gephart et al., 2023). Subjective social class perceptions capture the ranking people believe about themselves even if not objectively true (Stephens et al., 2012). To illustrate, for individuals growing up in poverty, attending an elite college on a scholarship can shape the psychological frame through which they see themselves in the world. Likewise, if individuals think that their neighbors view them as low social class, they may be more likely to also view themselves as low social class, regardless of income.

Socioeconomic status (American Psychological Association Task Force on Socioeconomic Status, 2007) and social class (Côté, 2011) are often used interchangeably (Antonoplis, 2022; Diemer et al., 2013). However, the general term “status” differs from social class, although each represents a form of inequality (Loignon & Woehr, 2018). Whereas social class is based on one’s socioeconomic resources, status describes respect or honor in hierarchical social relationships (Goldthorpe & Marshall, 1992). Therefore, “status and social class are independent. That is, one could be a member of an elite social class (i.e., rich nobility) but share the same status as members from lower classes (i.e., an esteemed but impoverished actor or artist)” (Loignon & Woehr, 2018, p. 72). Relatedly, the concept of power (control over valued resources) illustrates how a supervisor at a fast-food restaurant may control supervisee resources but still represent a lower class (Kraus et al., 2012).

People from different social classes have different backgrounds that give rise to divergent self-concepts and identities (Destin et al., 2017; Manstead, 2018). Specifically, middle- and upper social class students are taught to be expressively independent because abundant possessions permit less of a reliance on others and foster the increased safety that allows for individuality (Stephens et al., 2014). Further, high social class individuals are taught to question authority and understand the logic behind social rules (Stephens et al., 2014). People from the lower social classes, on the other hand, are taught a hard interdependence because economic scarcity fosters depending on others for resources. In addition, individuals from lower social classes tend to place a greater value on authority and hierarchy, being less likely to question leaders or step out of line. They are also taught that a general elevated risk of harmful outcomes (e.g., violence, illness) undergirds the creation of strict hierarchies that offer protection and support (Piff et al., 2017; Stephens et al., 2014).

These contrasting, deeply held values of low and high social class individuals create further divisions in academic and work contexts. For example, individuals from lower social classes exhibit negative stereotype threat (i.e., worse performance on tasks due to fear of confirming a stereotype) in university settings, such that academic conversations about test material before test-taking decrease test scores of low-class individuals while not affecting the test scores of middle- and upper-class counterparts (Johnson et al., 2011). Additional research has demonstrated reduced feelings of belonging and increased alienation for lower class individuals when placed in an environment populated by those in higher social classes (e.g., Bufton, 2003; Ostrove & Cole, 2003; Reay et al., 2009).

In many workplace and educational contexts, individuals from higher social classes receive preferential treatment based on their ability to navigate social situations erected by previous generations of the same social class that help ensure educational and professional success (Stephens et al., 2014; e.g., Rivera & Tilcsik, 2016; Volpato et al., 2017). In contrast, people from low social class backgrounds are penalized, stereotypically perceived as having poorer fit with the organization and expected to perform at substandard levels (e.g., Rivera & Tilcsik, 2016; Volpato et al., 2017). Another study found that people who reported activities on their resume that did not align with an elite job (e.g., soccer and country music vs. sailing and classical music) were less likely to be called back for an interview (Rivera & Tilcsik, 2016). Moreover, persistent poverty heightens the risk of negative psychological outcomes (e.g., anxiety and depression; see Santiago et al., 2011; Wilkinson & Pickett, 2007), which are stigmatized conditions (Barney et al., 2009).

Social Class in Teams

Although demographically diverse teams in organizations are increasing, and teams are becoming more cross functional due to the complexity of projects (Mathieu et al., 2017), little prior work has explored the effects of social class diversity on team processes and team outcomes. In team diversity research, individual characteristics are often classified as surface level (e.g., gender, race) or deep level (e.g., personality traits; Harrison et al., 2002; Mohammed & Angell, 2004). Evidence suggests that social class differences span both surface and deep level categories. For example, social class differences are visible through language and accent (Kraus et al., 2017), facial features (Bjornsdottir & Rule, 2017), clothing (Gillath et al., 2012), and even the shoes that individuals wear (Gillath et al., 2012). Other examples of individuals expressing surface level cues, knowingly or unknowingly, are differences in the types of food people eat (Monsivais & Drewnowski, 2009), music they enjoy (Snibbe & Markus, 2005), and leisure activities (Veblen, 1973). Similarly, research has demonstrated that people can quickly and accurately ascertain the social class of others with very little information, suggesting that social class is difficult to hide (e.g., Bjornsdottir & Rule, 2017; Piff et al., 2010; Rivera & Tilcsik, 2016).

In addition to surface-level cues, social class is also deep level and invisible, as evidenced by the different values and attitudes held by lower- versus higher-class individuals. For example, compared to higher class individuals, those from lower social classes tend to be more risk-averse (Kish-Gephart & Campbell, 2015) and less likely to emerge as group leaders (Martin et al., 2016). Moreover, social class manifests as deep-seated beliefs about interdependence and independence (Stephens et al., 2007). As such, social class differences are salient as a form of both surface-level and deep-level diversity in teams.

To the best of our knowledge, social class diversity has only been studied in one prior study as a moderator of the relationship between team emotion diversity (i.e., differences between team members’ real-time moods and specific emotions) and information sharing and also as a moderator of the relationship between information sharing and team task performance (Li et al., 2018). Using the rigid class-based caste system in India as a strong proxy for social class, Li et al. (2018) found that when teams had high social class diversity, negative emotion diversity inhibited team information sharing, but high social class diversity strengthened the positive relationship between information sharing and team task performance. Building on this study, we extend this research by making social class diversity the focal variable and examining its moderators and outcomes.

Hypotheses

The Effect of Social Class Diversity on Team Viability

Viability’s origins date back to Hackman (1987, p. 323), who advocated that the “social processes used in carrying out the work should maintain or enhance the capability of members to work together on subsequent team tasks.” Despite the importance of capturing the social sustainability required for future team performance, viability has been under-researched in the team literature (Bell & Marentette, 2011; Kozlowski & Bell, 2003). Given the well documented similarity-attraction (Byrne, 1971) and social categorization (e.g., ingroup favoritism, outgroup bias; Tajfel, 1981) effects for diverse teams, members’ willingness to work together in the future is especially relevant as an outcome for team diversity studies. Because performance is multiply determined, a recent review on team diversity argued that “one way of sharpening the focus in research on the effects of member heterogeneity in management teams, therefore, is to examine outcome variables that are more proximally affected” (Bunderson & Van der Vegt, 2018, p. 66). Following this recommendation, we examine viability as a proximal measure of team effectiveness (Bell & Marentette, 2011).

We argue that two mechanisms help explain how high levels of social class diversity might negatively affect team viability: damaging stereotypes and diverse working styles. Whereas stereotypes represent more of a surface-level diversity explanation for the social class diversity-viability relationship, working styles represent more of a deep-level diversity explanation. First, individuals depend on stereotypes to assess others’ social class (Bjornsdottir & Rule, 2017). According to the stereotype content model (Fiske et al., 2002), individuals from higher social classes view people from lower social classes as less competent than their peers, whereas individuals from lower social classes view members from the higher classes as cold, albeit competent (Connor et al., 2021; Durante et al., 2017). Specifically, in interpersonal settings like small groups, higher-class team members may come across as less approachable, less collaborative, and less communicative due to being seen as cold. Yet, upper class team members tend to take on more leadership roles due to perceptions of competence (Côté, 2011). This combination of perceived coldness and competence in leadership roles may inadvertently marginalize lower-class team members and create perceived distance between members with more and less resources (Côté, 2011). In contrast, because lower-class team members are viewed as less competent, they may be assigned fewer tasks and less important responsibilities or not be trusted to complete tasks assigned to them. They may therefore be regarded as peripheral members of the team who contribute less and are valued less. A review of social class and work concluded that “negative stereotypes associated with lower SES groups (e.g., members of lower SES groups are less competent and thus should be less trusted) can undermine individuals’ participation in important social and economic exchanges” (Kish-Gephart et al., 2023, p. 22). These damaging stereotypes between lower and higher social class members could lead to miscommunication and coordination difficulties, resulting in team members not wanting to continue working together.

Representing more of a deep-level diversity mechanism, working styles offer a second explanation for the negative effect of social class diversity on team viability. Individuals from lower-classes tend to have more collectivistic worldviews and interdependent self-concepts (Manstead, 2018; Stephens et al., 2014). Alternatively, individuals from middle and upper classes have independent self-concepts and respond to their social environments in ways that allow them to showcase independence and uniqueness (Kraus et al., 2011). Interdependent and independent self-concepts may lead to differences in completing projects, with lower-class members preferring a more collaborative and communicative approach and high social class members preferring to work on their own as they see fit. For example, lower-class individuals may desire more meetings to coordinate the work of the team, while upper-class members may believe that meetings are unnecessary.

Coordination breakdowns may result when upper-class members are proactively working on their own and expecting other team members to do the same while lower-class members are waiting for discussion and group interaction before getting started on team deliverables. Upper-class team members would likely be frustrated by an apparent lack of progress from their lower-class counterparts, whereas lower-class team members may feel unfairly treated when they are not given clear direction through discussion. Due to misunderstandings and coordination problems resulting from independent and interdependent worldviews, team members with high social class diversity may be more likely to report that they do not want to continue working together than team members with low social class diversity. Thus, we hypothesized:

Hypothesis 1: High social class diversity negatively predicts team viability.

The Moderating Role of Mean Perspective Taking and Conflict Resolution Norms

Given that social class diversity is predicted to lower team viability, what variables may help to attenuate this effect? Multiple qualitative and quantitative reviews of team diversity have underscored the critical need to better understand the contingencies of team diversity effects (e.g., Bell, 2007; Horwitz & Horwitz, 2007; van Dijk et al., 2012; van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007). According to van Knippenberg and Mell (2016, p. 139), “a first and obvious way forward that our review thus identifies is to prioritize programmatic research on moderation of diversity effects.” These diversity scholars also called for more integrative efforts in the study of diversity moderators (van Knippenberg & Mell, 2016). In response, Guillaume et al. (2017) organized categories of empirically supported contingency factors into a framework. Specifically, Guillaume et al. (2017) “findings suggest that (aggregated) individual differences are important moderators of . . .work group diversity effects” (p. 292) and “climate is likely to be the most proximal moderator of workplace diversity effects as it captures how things are carried out in a work group or organization” (p. 293). van Knippenberg and Mell (2016) similarly advised combining team composition and team emergent states to more comprehensively account for team diversity’s effects, which is also advocated by the broader research on teams (Ilgen et al., 2005). Based on these theoretical frameworks, we feature one compositional moderator (mean perspective taking) and one emergent state moderator (conflict resolution norms) in our study model.

In addition to integrating distal and proximal variables as well as compositional and emergent state variables, our choice of moderators also follows the recommendation of Guillaume et al. (2017) to emphasize moderators upon which managers and organizations can exert influence. Mean perspective taking can be shaped via training and development of individual members (e.g., Ku et al., 2015; Sessa, 1996; Zaki, 2014) and conflict resolution norms can also be trained in teams (e.g., Deutsch, 1994; Feldman, 1984; Nawaz, 2018; Opp, 1982). As noted by the team diversity review conducted by Bunderson and Van der Vegt (2018, p. 54), “the promise of vertical differences is grounded in theories of social coordination and conflict reduction.” With clear implications for practice, both moderators may function as levers to attenuate the negative effects of social class diversity on team viability.

Furthermore, our choice of the two moderators represents surface- and deep-level aspects of social class diversity. Because it has been found to decrease stereotyping (Vescio et al., 2003), perspective taking highlights the dynamics underlying social class as a form of surface-level diversity. In contrast, because they take time to develop, conflict resolution norms feature the dynamics underlying social class as a form of deep-level diversity.

Perspective Taking

Perspective taking is defined as “the active cognitive process of imagining the world from another’s vantage point or imagining oneself in another’s shoes to understand their visual viewpoint, thoughts, motivations, intentions, and/or emotions” (Ku et al., 2015, pp. 94–95). As such, perspective taking is an intellectual process that individuals voluntarily and deliberately engage in to cognitively simulate what it is like to see the world from another’s vantage point (Ku et al., 2015). Whereas perspective taking is a cognitive process, empathy is considered an affective process (Ku et al., 2015), although the term “intellectual empathy” has been used to describe perspective taking (Duan & Hill, 1996, p. 263).

Following Parker and Axtell’s (2001, p. 1086) lead, we draw from the dispositional and cognitive-affective approaches and assume that “people are reasonably stable in the extent to which they take others’ perspectives” but also that “organizational factors can shape and change perspective taking by influencing the specific situations employees are exposed to or by affecting their developmental state over the long term.”

When individuals engage in perspective taking, affective and cognitive manifestations include empathy and positive attributions, respectively (Todd & Galinsky, 2014). That is, perspective takers tend to understand others’ experiences, show concern for others’ problems, and celebrate their successes. Perspective takers also make more positive attributions for others’ behaviors and are less prone to biases in which others’ shortcomings are blamed more on personal (e.g., laziness) than situational (e.g., technological failure) factors (Parker & Axtell, 2001). Another cognitive mechanism through which perspective taking operates is self-outgroup merging in which “the mental processes associated with perspective taking cause an observer’s thoughts and feelings about the target to become, in some sense, more ‘self-like’” (Davis et al., 1996, pp. 713–714).

Perspective taking is positively predictive of liking and psychological and cognitive closeness for the target as well as more cognitive-demanding information processing for the perspective taker (Ku et al., 2015). Behavioral outcomes include higher approach behavior, coordination, generosity, and helping behavior in relation to the perspective taking target (Todd & Galinsky, 2014). Also strengthening social bonds, perspective taking can lead to intergroup effects such as lower prejudice, stereotyping, discriminatory views (Ku et al., 2015), and a higher tendency to perceive conflict as task- as opposed to relationship-oriented (Sessa, 1996).

In addition to hypothesizing a social class diversity–team viability main effect, we expect that high mean perspective taking will weaken the negative effect that social class diversity has on team viability. First, perspective taking increases psychological similarity between low and high social class members rather than exacerbating differences (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). Therefore, although lower- and higher-class team members come from different backgrounds and evidence different viewpoints, teams with members high in perspective taking would foster psychological similarity by examining others’ points of view. Instead of emphasizing the disparities between upper versus lower social class team members, high perspective taking teams would establish the listening and understanding needed to look at each other’s side, thereby seeing each other as more similar than different. Because people prefer similarity in their interactions (Byrne, 1971), team members would therefore be more likely to want to continue working together when they perceive commonality rather than disparity.

Second, perspective taking has also been shown to reduce ingroup favoritism and decrease biases associated with stereotyping (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000). Thus, although higher social class team members tend to view lower social class members as incompetent and lower social class members tend to view higher social class members as cold (Durante et al., 2017), teams with members higher in perspective taking would have less of a tendency to rely on damaging stereotypes. Despite the differences in backgrounds and collaboration styles between higher and lower social class members working together, the ability to “put yourself in others’ shoes” permits members to make more favorable attributions for member differences.

Conversely, when mean perspective taking is low, members in teams with high social class diversity will indicate less desire to work with each other. This is because teams with lower perspective taking members will be less likely to listen to others’ arguments and more apt to exacerbate differences, notice salient surface-level signals, and engage in negative stereotyping (Skorinko & Sinclair, 2013). Specifically, team members who do not consider others’ viewpoints will be more likely to attribute the background differences of their lower- or upper-class colleagues to overgeneralizations such as incompetence and coldness, respectively (Durante et al., 2017). These detrimental stereotypes would increase the likelihood of criticism and miscommunication, thereby lowering viability. Thus, we predicted:

Hypothesis 2: Mean perspective taking moderates the relationship between social class diversity and team viability such that the relationship between social class diversity and team viability is more negative when mean perspective taking is low rather than high.

Conflict Resolution Norms

In comparison to the extensive research on team conflict (e.g., de Wit et al., 2012), considerably less research has focused on conflict management (“behavior oriented toward the intensification, reduction, and resolution of the tension”; De Dreu et al., 1999, p. 371). This is disappointing given that conflict management mitigates the negative effects of conflict on team performance (Jehn, 1997). The importance of conflict management was underscored in a meta-analysis, where it accounted for 13% of the variance in team performance and affective outcomes after controlling for type of conflict (DeChurch et al., 2013).

Related to conflict management, conflict resolution norms are unwritten rules that team members informally agree to follow (Cialdini & Trost, 1998) regarding how quickly and openly conflict will be handled (Bendersky & Hays, 2012; Jehn & Mannix, 2001). When conflict is openly addressed, teams tend to report less conflict along with higher levels of group cooperation (Bendersky & Hays, 2012) and cohesion (Tekleab et al., 2009). For example, Bendersky and Hays (2012) found status conflict to be negatively related to team performance, but high conflict resolution norms attenuated that relationship. Simply, teams that openly discuss conflict are less likely to have their performance affected by traditionally harmful conflict.

In addition to perspective taking as a team composition variable, we also hypothesize that conflict resolution norms, an emergent state, will interact with social class diversity to influence team viability. Specifically, we expect that high conflict resolution norms will weaken the negative effects that social class diversity has on team viability. As different expectations and perspectives emerge from lower and higher social class members, teams with high conflict resolution norms will be more likely to openly discuss conflict that may arise. Therefore, despite different collaboration styles, high social class diversity teams with high conflict resolution norms would be less likely to experience miscommunication and coordination breakdowns than teams with low conflict resolution norms, because they have developed norms to resolve conflict directly and quickly (Bendersky & Hays, 2012; Tekleab et al., 2009). Effective communication and coordination during conflict would then result in members being willing to continue working together in the future (Foo et al., 2006).

In contrast, when members fail to develop norms to deal with conflict openly and quickly, high social class diversity will likely devolve into miscommunication and coordination breakdowns, thereby reducing members’ willingness to continue working in the team. Different working styles deriving from the interdependent versus independent self-concepts of low and high social class members, respectively, will be more likely viewed as insurmountable without mechanisms in place to deal with conflict openly and directly, lowering viability. Thus, we predicted:

Hypothesis 3: Conflict resolution norms moderate the relationship between social class diversity and team viability such that the relationship between social class diversity and team viability is more negative when conflict resolution norms are low rather than high.

Method

Participants

Participants were 568 business school undergraduates from an English-speaking university in the Middle East. The mean age was 19.88 (SD = 1.67), and the sample was 48.2% female (81 participants did not report sex). The nationality of the sample was diverse, with participants from the United Arab Emirates (14.8%), Egypt (9.4%), Jordan (8.9%), India (8.3%), and 12 other nations that each made up between 1% and 7% of the sample (39.1% in total). Students comprised 132 teams ranging from three to six members with an average size of 3.90 members. Data were collected by business faculty at the university, and some teams were formed randomly while others were composed by the class instructor.

Procedure

Teams were instructed to work as business consultants. They had to diagnose the problems of a fictitious organization and/or develop a business plan for a novel product. Projects were semester-long team assignments, with some intermediary milestones building up to the final team project submittal. Given their scope, teams had to meet outside of scheduled class times to finish their assigned project.

Participants completed survey measures at two points in time: the beginning of the semester (Time 1) and at the end of the semester before the final project was due (Time 2). At Time 1, demographic information and perspective taking (Davis et al., 1996) were measured. At Time 2, conflict resolution norms (Bendersky & Hays, 2012) and team viability (Quigley et al., 2007) were collected. All measures were administered and completed in English.

Measures

Subjective social class was assessed using the MacArthur Scale of Subjective SES (Adler et al., 2000), which is commonly used in social class research to measure subjective social class and is strongly associated with objective measures of social class (Côté, 2011; Loignon & Woehr, 2018). This measure depicts a ladder with 10 rungs with the words “worst off” next to the number “1” and “best off” next to the number “10.” Participants were instructed to circle the number beside the rung they believed best represented their social class compared to others from their hometown.

Hometown was used as the social class referent because it has been demonstrated to be superior to a broader societal referent (Anderson et al., 2012). Furthermore, hometown social class has strong, prolonged effects into adulthood (for a review, see Manstead, 2018). Specifically, people’s social class origin (i.e., hometown) can broadly affect adult outcomes, including leader emergence (Barling & Weatherhead, 2016), career trajectory (van Dijk et al., 2020), and decision making (Shafir, 2017). A common definition of subjective social class necessitates the prolonged access to, or exclusion from, critical resources (Kraus et al., 2012), and impacts one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors through a combination of the environment one is raised in (Bourdieu, 1994) and perceptions of social class rank compared to others (Côté, 2011). For example, whereas the primary developmental years of children in lower social class environments is often one of risk and a general lack of economic stability, the primary developmental years of higher social class children tend to be one of safety and economic stability. These differences have been found to be deeply psychologically meaningful when children enter college (Stephens et al., 2014) and when entering the workforce (Thompson & Dahling, 2019), creating consequential differences between the two groups. As Stephens et al. (2014) highlighted in their research, there is often more risk associated with being lower class, such as less parental attention and more hierarchy, both of which contribute to more negative adult outcomes. Because we draw upon this line of reasoning and empirical support in the rationale for our hypotheses, it was important to have a measure (hometown) that was consistent with our conceptual arguments.

Social Class Diversity

According to Klein and Kozlowski (2000), social class diversity is classified as a configural team property because it originates in individuals and captures the pattern or variability of characteristics in a team without assuming that the individual characteristics are similar across members. Our primary interest was in modeling the within-team variability of social class, so Chan’s (1998) dispersion composition model is most suitable because it treats the variance of scores within a team as the focal construct rather than as error variance. We conceptualized social class diversity as separation diversity because of its appropriateness in describing the position of members on a horizontal continuum (Harrison & Klein, 2007). Therefore, individual responses to social class items were aggregated to the group level via the standard deviation as recommended by Harrison and Klein (2007).

Perspective taking was measured using the five-item perspective taking subscale from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), which adopts a dispositional approach (Davis, 1980; Davis et al., 1996; Davis, 1983). The IRI is commonly used (e.g., Galinsky et al., 2008; Grant & Berry, 2011; Skorinko et al., 2014) and has strong validation evidence for its psychometric properties (e.g., Davis, 1980, 1983). A recent review concluded that in comparison to other metrics, “Davis (1980) IRI better captures the underlying perspective taking construct” (Ku et al., 2015, p. 82).

IRI items were rated using a five-point scale (1 = does not describe me well to 5 = describes me very well). Sample items include, “I sometimes find it difficult to see things from the ‘other persons’ point of view’” and “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective.”

Mean Perspective Taking

According to Klein and Kozlowski (2000), mean perspective taking is considered a configural team property because it originates in individual team members but makes no assumption that the individual characteristics are similar across members. To reflect a summation of members’ perspective taking at the team-level, Chan’s (1998) additive composition model is most appropriate because it captures sums or averages regardless of variance among units. As such, individual responses to perspective taking items were aggregated to the group level via the mean.

Conflict resolution norms were measured using a two-item scale from Bendersky and Hays (2012) on a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Sample items include “Conflict was dealt with openly in my team” and “If conflict arose in my team, the people involved initiated steps to resolve the conflict immediately.” Cronbach’s alpha was .73.

According to Klein and Kozlowski (2000), conflict resolution norms are classified as a shared team property because they are created through convergent processes and represent consensus among within-team observations. The items for conflict resolution norms refer to teams rather than individuals while capturing within-team agreement, so Chan’s (1998) referent shift composition model is most appropriate. Unlike configural team properties, within-group consensus is necessary to demonstrate shared team properties (Klein & Kozlowski, 2000) and referent-shift consensus models (Chan, 1998). The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC(1)) was .10, indicating that variance in ratings due to team membership was about 10% (Shrout & Fleiss, 1979). The median r_wg_(j) was .86, demonstrating strong agreement among team members (LeBreton & Senter, 2008). Based on these indices, conflict resolution norms were aggregated to the team level via mean.

Team viability was measured using a 5-item scale developed by Tekleab et al. (2009) on a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree), and included “I would be happy to work with the team members on other projects in the future” and “If I had the chance, I would have switched teams.” Cronbach’s alpha was .87.

According to Klein and Kozlowski (2000), viability is considered a shared team property because it originates in experiences held in common by team members, and homogeneity of ratings is necessary to infer that the construct exists. The meaning of viability is derived from the consensus of members regarding the future sustainability of the team (Bell & Marentette, 2011), so Chan’s (1998) composition model of direct consensus was the most fitting. Within-group agreement is required to demonstrate shared team properties (Klein & Kozlowski, 2000) and direct consensus models (Chan, 1998). The median r_wg_(j) was .94 and the intraclass correlation coefficient was ICC(1) = .24, indicating that variance in ratings due to team membership was about 24% (Shrout & Fleiss, 1979). Based on these indices, viability was aggregated to the team level via mean (LeBreton & Senter, 2008).

Control Variables

We controlled for team size because teams with more members can have greater diversity (Jackson et al., 1991; Worchel et al., 1991). Mean social class diversity was included as a control because diversity scores can be confounded by within-group standard deviations (Bedeian & Mossholder, 2000; Harrison & Klein, 2007). We also controlled for gender and nationality diversity using Blau’s diversity index (0 = no diversity; 1 = complete diversity) to ensure the findings were unique to social class and not demographic diversity (Blau, 1977).

Results

Data Analysis

Hypotheses were tested at the team level using hierarchical regression. We used a four-step procedure to test for moderated effects beginning with the control variables in Step 1 (team size, gender diversity, nationality diversity, and mean social class). In Step 2, we entered social class diversity. In Step 3, we added perspective taking and conflict resolution norms. Last, we entered the interactions terms in Step 4. Both interactions were included together to ensure the effects did not account for the same variance in team viability. Variables were mean centered prior to creating the interaction terms to enhance interpretability (Aiken et al., 1991). Table 1 provides descriptive statistics and correlations for all study variables at the team level of analysis.

Table 1.

Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations Between All Group-Level Variables.

Variables	M	SD	1.	2.	3.	4.	5.	6.	7.
1. Team Size	3.90	0.65	-
2. Gender Diversity	0.41	0.27	.17*	-
3. Nationality Diversity	0.66	0.18	.27**	.36**	-
4. Mean Social Class	7.08	0.89	.01	.07	−0.2	-
5. Social Class Diversity	1.32	0.71	.09	−.06	.12	.48**	-
6. Conflict Resolution Norms	3.89	0.68	.01	.09	−.04	.00	−.01	-
7. Perspective Taking	3.69	0.39	.06	.02	−.04	−.04	.02	.01	-
8. Team Viability	4.06	0.74	−.04	.01	−.08	.11	−.12	.49**	.04

Note. N = 132 teams.

p < .05. **p < .01.

Tests of Hypotheses

Table 2 provides the results of the regression analysis with team viability as the dependent variable. According to Hypothesis 1, social class diversity would negatively predict team viability. However, this relationship was not statistically significant (b = −0.08, p = .467). Hypothesis 1 was unsupported.

Table 2.

Regression Analyses on the Moderating Effect of Perspective Taking and Conflict Resolution Norms on the Relationship Between Social Class Diversity and Viability.

	Step 1	Step 2	Step 3	Step 4
F	0.65	0.62	7.03**	6.95**
R ²	0.02	0.02	0.28**	0.34**
ΔR²	-	0.00	0.26**	0.06**
Variable	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)
Intercept	4.04 (0.07)**	4.04 (0.07)**	4.03 (0.06)**	4.03 (0.05)**
Step 1: Controls
Gender Diversity	0.11 (0.27)	0.10 (0.27)	−0.05 (0.23)	0.00 (0.23)
Nationality Diversity	−0.32 (0.42)	−0.31 (0.42)	−0.11 (0.37)	−0.20 (0.36)
Team Size	0.00 (0.11)	0.01 (0.11)	0.00 (0.09)	0.02 (0.09)
Mean Social Class	0.09 (0.08)	0.06 (0.09)	0.05 (0.08)	0.06 (0.07)
Step 2: Social Class Diversity
Social Class Diversity		−0.08 (0.10)	−0.08 (0.09)	−0.08 (0.09)
Step 3: Moderators
Conflict Resolution Norms			0.57 (0.08)**	0.59 (0.08)**
Perspective Taking			−0.06 (0.17)	0.02 (0.17)
Step 4: Interactions
Social Class Diversity × Perspective Taking				0.51 (0.25)*
Social Class Diversity × Conflict Resolution Norms				0.30 (0.11)*

Note. N = 132 teams.

p < .05. **p < .01.

Hypothesis 2 predicted that perspective taking would moderate the relationship between social class diversity and team viability such that higher mean perspective taking weakens and lower mean perspective taking strengthens the negative relationship between social class diversity and team viability. As shown in Table 2, the interaction between perspective taking and social class diversity was statistically significant (b = 0.51, p = .045). Regression slopes were graphed at one standard deviation above and below the mean as recommended by Aiken et al. (1991). Figure 1 demonstrated that the slope for teams with higher perspective taking was not significant (t = 0.40, p = .689). For teams with lower perspective taking, the slope showed a significant, negative relationship between social class diversity and team viability (t = −1.99, p = .048). Hypothesis 2 was supported.

Figure 1.

The interactive effects of social class diversity and perspective taking on viability.

Hypothesis 3 predicted that higher conflict resolution norms would weaken the negative relationship between social class diversity and team viability and lower conflict resolution norms would strengthen the negative relationship between social class diversity and team viability. As displayed in Table 2, the interaction between conflict resolution norms and social class diversity was statistically significant (b = 0.30, p = .011). A graph of the interaction (see Figure 2) demonstrated that the slope for teams with higher conflict resolution norms was not significant (t = 1.12, p = .265). For teams with lower conflict resolution norms, the slope showed a significant negative relationship between social class diversity and team viability (t = −2.48, p = .014). Hypothesis 3 was supported.

Figure 2.

The interactive effects of social class diversity and conflict resolution norms on viability.

As displayed in Table 2, the controls, the social class diversity main effect, and both moderators accounted for 26% of the variance in team viability. Together, both interactions explained an additional 6% of the variance beyond controls and main effects.

Ancillary Analyses

In addition to the more conservative test of testing both interactions simultaneously, we tested each interaction separately, using the same controls in Table 2. Run separately, the interaction between perspective taking and social class diversity on team viability was not statistically significant, b = 0.27, p = .366, as shown in Table A1 (see Appendix). However, the interaction between conflict resolution norms and social class diversity on team viability remained statistically significant, b = 0.28, p = .015 (see Table A2 in Appendix). The correlation between the two interaction terms was not statistically significant (r = −.05, p = .605). Therefore, multicollinearity arising from a high correlation between the two product terms is an unlikely explanation for why only one significant interaction resulted when regressions were run separately.

We also ran a regression analysis testing a three-way interaction between perspective taking, conflict resolution norms, and social class diversity on viability, with the two 2-way interactions and the same controls in Table 2. Only the two-way interaction between conflict resolution norms and social class diversity remained statistically significant (β = .20, p = .009). The two-way interaction between perspective taking and social class diversity (β = .11, p = .171), the two-way interaction between perspective taking and conflict resolution norms (β = −.05, p = .506), and the three-way interaction (β = −1.35, p = .108) were not significant. Together, these ancillary analyses showed a robust pattern for the interaction between conflict resolution norms and social class diversity, whereas the interaction between mean perspective taking and social class diversity appears weaker.

Following the recommendations of Becker et al. (2016), we ran an analysis parallel to Table 2 except that we removed gender diversity, nationality diversity, and team size as controls. Demonstrating the robustness of the results reported in Table 2, no substantive differences in findings emerged compared to analyses with controls. Specifically, the main effect of social class diversity on team viability remained insignificant (β = −.076, p = .448). The interaction of perspective taking on the relationship between social class diversity and team viability remained statistically significant (β = .152, p = .045), thus supporting Hypothesis 2. Similarly, the interaction of conflict resolution norms on the relationship between social class diversity and team viability remained statistically significant (β = .152, p = .010), supporting Hypothesis 3. When regressions were run independently to test the effects of only perspective taking as a moderator and only conflict resolution norms as a moderator, results without control variables did not change substantively from the regressions in Tables A1 and A2 (see Appendix).

To assess whether our moderated effects were unique to social class diversity compared to demographic diversity, we substituted gender diversity for social class diversity as the focal variable in a model parallel to Table 2, controlling for national diversity and team size. In addition, we ran a similar analysis for nationality diversity, controlling for gender diversity and team size. Like the results for social class diversity, there was no significant main effect on team viability for nationality diversity (β = −.10, p = .316) nor gender diversity (β = .05, p = .576). Unlike our hypothesized results, however, neither mean perspective taking (β = .09, p = .367; β = .12, p = .164) or conflict resolution norms (β = −.10, p = .229; β = −.12, p = .120) had a moderating effect on the relationship between team viability and nationality diversity or gender diversity, respectively.

Instead of using the standard deviation to measure social class diversity, we also tested our hypotheses using the coefficient of variation, which corrects for mean values (e.g., Lydon-Staley et al., 2020). Results did not differ substantively across the standard deviation and coefficient of variation metrics.

Discussion

According to Ingram (2020), p. 1) in a Harvard Business Review article, “the potential rewards—for individuals, organizations, and society—are enormous” when diversity initiatives are expanded to include lower social class employees. We certainly agree. However, our study results add a note of caution. When teams are composed of lower and higher social class individuals who report a low level of willingness to adopt others’ perspectives and when team dynamics neglect resolving conflict efficiently, members’ desire to work with each other in the future is reduced.

Specifically, two main findings emerged from this study. Simple slope analyses revealed that, across both interactions, the effects of social class diversity on team viability were significant for low mean perspective taking and low conflict resolution norms, but not the high conditions. Results of our ancillary analyses also indicated that social class diversity alone accounts for our findings, as nationality diversity and gender diversity did not exhibit the same pattern of findings. As hypothesized, when social class diversity was high, viability was reduced in teams with lower perspective taking as well as lower conflict resolution norms. When team members are similar in social class, viability is higher, despite lower conflict resolution norms, because members of the same social class may experience less conflict and therefore may be less affected by the lack of norms to address conflict openly and directly. The negative correlation between social class diversity and team viability does not occur in teams with higher mean perspective taking or higher conflict resolution norms. For teams with higher conflict resolution norms, this is likely because they had uniformly high viability, creating a restriction of range. Therefore, when conflict resolution norms were higher, the variance in viability was compressed, but when norms were lower, the effects of social class diversity on viability had more room to vary (Cortina et al., 2019).

The lack of a statistically significant main effect between social class diversity and team viability and the presence of two moderated effects speaks to the conditional nature of the findings. The need to adopt a contingency perspective has been repeatedly reinforced in the team diversity (e.g., Bell, 2007; van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007) and social class (e.g., Bergman & Jean, 2016; Loignon & Woehr, 2018) literatures, but infrequently implemented in social class studies. Supportive of the theoretical frameworks advocated by multiple team diversity scholars (Guillaume et al., 2017; van Knippenberg & Mell, 2016), our findings showed that both individual differences and team emergent states affect team diversity’s effects on team outcomes. The detrimental effects of surface and deep-level diversity on a key but under-researched, proximal measure of team effectiveness (i.e., team viability) are mitigated through team composition and team norms. Specifically, mean perspective taking and conflict resolution norms shape the degree to which higher and lower resourced team members want to continue working together in the future. These results extend our knowledge of team diversity and social class in significant ways. Below, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future directions of our study.

Research and Practical Implications

The results of this study make meaningful contributions to both the team diversity and social class literatures. First, despite its increasing relevance, social class as a form of team diversity has been underexplored. Apart from Li et al. (2018) study examining social class diversity as a moderator, we are unaware of other published research on social class diversity in the organizational or team science literatures. Addressing this absence of research, we followed the recommendations of van Knippenberg and Schippers (2007) to expand the team diversity literature beyond demographics and broad personality variables by investigating task-relevant types of diversity. Exploring social class as a form of team diversity is especially appropriate, given that social class effects are profound (Côté, 2011; Manstead, 2018) and span across a lifespan (Bourdieu, 1994; Kraus et al., 2012). Moreover, social class diversity is a likely reality in many teams and organizations. Our results support the argument that social class diversity may be disruptive in teams without members adopting others’ perspectives or strong team norms to manage conflict.

Second, this study contributes to the social class literature by extending the level of analysis from mainly individuals to teams, as recommended in a recent review (Loignon & Woehr, 2018). As the global economy becomes more integrated and multi-national organizations continue to expand, workplace teams will become more diversified, with social class becoming an increasingly relevant dimension of team diversity. Therefore, organizational science research on team-level social class is crucial.

This study also has practical implications for managers. First and foremost, managers ought to be aware their teams likely contain social class diversity, which should be considered even though the differences may not be obvious. Members of the lower class may have learned from earlier experiences that it is important to exhibit “higher” class cultural behaviors and signals such as clothing, hobbies, or language (Martin & Côté, 2019). Although masking visible indicators of social class, this ability to “code switch” (adjustment of one’s style of speech or behavior to match the dominant culture) does not necessarily mean that deep cultural values have changed. Lower social class members may still hold certain beliefs, such as strongly valuing hierarchies and clear direction from managers (Stephens et al., 2014).

Second, managers should facilitate conflict resolution norms by encouraging teams diverse on social class to discuss disagreements openly and quickly as they arise. Because the way teams handle conflict determines the degree to which teams operate as a coherent unit (e.g., DeChurch et al., 2007), it is critical that organizations offer training in conflict resolution to build productive norms. Indeed, “teams that are successful over time are likely to be both proactive in anticipating the need for conflict resolution and pluralistic in developing conflict resolution strategies that apply to all group members” (Behfar et al., 2008, p. 170). Therefore, managers and team leaders should actively monitor how conflicts are being addressed and model open and timely conflict resolution in teams composed of high and low social class members. Further, interventions such as inclusive leadership (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006) and psychological safety (e.g., Edmondson, 1999) may be needed to increase team members’ desire to continue collaborating in the future for teams with a mix of high and low social class members.

Last, organizations should value and cultivate the practice and use of perspective taking in teams as a means of preventing social class diversity from negatively affecting team viability. Training interventions have been shown to increase perspective taking (Zaki, 2014). A review of perspective taking urged managers to “utilize perspective-taking to improve organizational functioning” (Ku et al., 2015, p. 97). Teams who have been trained to perspective take ascribe conflict as less personally harmful and more task-based (Sessa, 1996). Thus, managers and organizations should train and cultivate perspective taking in their teams, as it is a powerful asset and may increase team viability for teams with high social class diversity (Longmire & Harrison, 2018).

While we argue that there are levers by which managers and organizations can exert control, we acknowledge that mean perspective taking and conflict resolution norms are not easy to change, nor is the process for doing so easily determined. Although training perspective taking and modeling open and timely conflict resolution in teams composed of high and low social class members will require substantial time and effort, our results indicate that the reward will be team members who desire to continue working together.

Limitations and Future Research

This study had several strengths as well as limitations. First, social class was highly salient in our sample, as participants in this study were from different countries, including northern Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia. Given that social class may not be as salient in other parts of the world, our findings may not replicate, such as in Western cultures where most individuals self-identify as middle class (e.g., the United States). Further, conceptions of social class may have been skewed by origin country. Students who perceived themselves as high social class in their home country may have rated themselves as much lower on the social class scale in the cross-national context at school. Scholars have made strong conceptual arguments that one’s class-based view of the world is heavily dependent on the social class in which one is raised (e.g., Carey & Markus, 2017; Cohen & Varnum, 2016). However, because the measurement of social class is complex and nuanced, much remains unknown about how people conceive of their social class, especially when moving across cultures.

We used a one-item self-report ladder scale that is often used to measure one’s subjective social class (Côté, 2011; Kraus et al., 2019a, 2019b). However, one-item measures are psychometrically undesirable because they are difficult to correctly assess (Fisher et al., 2016). The combination of measuring subjective feelings connected to social class based on identity and objective metrics (e.g., income, wealth, and occupational prestige) would be a compelling way to reduce the potential for statistical noise in many of the current methods that rely on a single indicator. Triangulating subjective and objective metrics would likely be cross-disciplinary because psychologists tend to focus on subjective social class (e.g., Côté, 2011), economists tend to focus on objective measures (e.g., Chetty et al., 2017), and sociologists tend to focus on the qualitative aspects of social class (e.g., Small et al., 2010).

Our research focused on historical social class differences perceived by team members because of their profound psychological effects on how people think and behave in adulthood (see Manstead, 2018 for a review). However, future research should also examine current social class differences in teams based on objective economic resources (e.g., teams composed of unpaid interns and paid full-time employees, entry-level hires and senior employees paid at a higher rate, or line workers and senior executives¹). Social class diversity can also occur in companies when lower paid individuals from low cost of living regions (e.g., contractors, developing country talent) are seeded into teams with higher paid employees. Indeed, research has found that high pay dispersion in sports teams undermines individual and team performance, cooperation, and a sense of common purpose across the team or organization (e.g., Beaumont & Harris, 2003; Bloom, 1999; Shaw, 2014). A promising future research direction would be to consider the interplay between historical and current social class differences.

Future research should investigate non-student teams, including military and non-governmental organizations where social class diversity would be expected to be especially salient. In addition, organizational teams may have longer tenure than the 4 months of a semester where student teams worked together. Receiving similar compensation may cause lower social class individuals to acculturate over extended periods of time in organizational teams. In addition, variations in task type and difficulty across team assignments may have been a confound that we were unable to control for in our analyses. Also, team perspective taking, conflict resolution norms, and team viability were only measured at one time point during the study, so we cannot assess if these variables changed over time or were relatively stable. Future research should therefore control for task type and measure study variables at multiple time points to rule out temporal changes. Further, some teams were given more freedom to choose their teammates, while other teams were assigned their teammates randomly or by the professor. Perspective taking and conflict resolution norms may have been affected when teams were permitted the autonomy to choose their teammates. Ideally, teams should be seeded randomly to remove the potential self-selection effects of teams being formed by groups of friends or peers.

Guided by the theoretical framework proposed by Guillaume et al. (2017) review emphasizing the contingency perspective on team diversity effects, we chose to model factors that may moderate the relationship between social class diversity and team viability rather than mediate that relationship. Indeed, the call to focus on moderators in the team diversity literature has been far more dominant than mediators (e.g., Bell, 2007; Horwitz & Horwitz, 2007; van Dijk et al., 2012; van Knippenberg & Schippers, 2007). Nevertheless, modeling both mediators and moderators would have been preferable, especially because mediating mechanisms, such as stereotyping and working styles, were implied in our hypothesis rationale but were not measured. As such, future research should explicitly assess the effect of social class diversity on stereotyping and working styles. In addition, relationship conflict (tension, animosity, interpersonal friction between members; Jehn & Mannix, 2001) may result from differences between members with more and fewer resources. Team learning could also be disrupted due to differences in social class, which may lead to less desire for team members to continue working together. Chan (2019) points out the importance of studying team climate as mediators of important relationships. Therefore, exploring climates of trust, competition, and knowledge sharing, among others, may yield fruitful results and enable richer inferences.

Further, in this study, we only examined team viability. Future research can also examine other outcomes of social class diversity, such as team performance, creativity, innovation, and adaptation. Although student grades are common outcome measures in classroom studies, most of the faculty through which we collected our data were unwilling to share the grades of the student’s team projects due to privacy concerns. Therefore, we acknowledge the lack of usable team performance data as a weakness of this research. Whereas we hypothesized negative effects of social class diversity on team viability, future research should also consider the potential upsides of social class diversity. Team diversity research has shown positive effects for creativity and innovation because diverse team members offer different perspectives important for creative outcomes (Bell et al., 2011). Likewise, future studies should explore whether the diverse orientations of low and high social class members help the team create innovative ideas and deliverables.

Future research can also explore what might help teams composed of members with different resource levels want to continue to work together in the future. Individuals who transition from lower to higher social classes and vice versa may be important in this regard. Martin and Côté (2019) suggest that the farther one transitions across social class boundaries, the more difficult it may be to fit in; however, they point out that “transitioners” who are successful may be able to establish bridges between the different social classes, as they compile a toolkit of different social scripts and norms they can deploy as needed. This idea deserves future empirical research and could be key to mitigating the adverse effects of social class diversity in teams.

Finally, although we emphasized the positive benefits of our moderators in our research, it is important to note that perspective taking does not always result in positive outcomes. For example, high perspective taking can increase evaluative concerns between ethnic groups (the fear that one might be viewed as prejudiced) which can lead to worse intergroup interaction (Vorauer & Sasaki, 2009). In addition, perspective taking can have negative outcomes when stereotypes are strong because individuals will take another’s perspective based on the stereotype and not on the experience of the actual target (Skorinko & Sinclair, 2013). Moreover, individuals perceived to be highly competent can be viewed less positively by those higher in perspective taking (Ku et al., 2015). Future research should examine how social class diversity’s effects are influenced by the potential negative effects of perspective taking.

Conclusion

Social class diversity has largely been ignored in the organizational and team sciences (Côté, 2011; Loignon & Woehr, 2018). Answering the recent call to investigate the effects of teams composed of higher and lower resourced members (Loignon & Woehr, 2018), we examined social class as an under-researched form of diversity operating in teams. The effect of social class diversity on teams’ willingness to continue working together in the future depended on (1) the extent to which members see their teammates’ points of view and (2) the degree to which members have norms in place to resolve conflict directly and openly. Given these promising results and the ongoing importance of social class inequality in organizations, future research should continue to examine social class in the team context.

Footnotes

Appendix

Table A2.

Hierarchical Regression Analyses Testing the Moderated Effect of Conflict Resolution Norms on Social Class Diversity and Viability.

	Step 1	Step 2	Step 3	Step 4
F	0.65	0.53	8.23**	8.20**
R ²	0.02	0.02	0.28**	0.32*
ΔR²	-	0.00	0.26**	0.04*
Variable	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)	b (SE)
Intercept	4.04 (0.07)**	4.04 (0.07)**	4.03 (0.06)**	4.03 (0.06)**
Step 1: Controls
Gender Diversity	0.11 (0.27)	0.10 (0.27)	−0.06 (0.23)	−0.00 (0.23)
Nationality Diversity	−0.32 (0.42)	−0.31 (0.42)	−0.10 (0.37)	−0.17 (0.36)
Team Size	0.01 (0.11)	0.01 (0.11)	0.00 (0.09)	0.01 (0.09)
Mean Social Class	0.09 (0.08)	0.06 (0.09)	0.06 (0.08)	0.05 (0.07)
Step 2: Social Class Diversity
Social Class Diversity		−0.08 (0.10)	−0.08 (0.09)	−0.08 (0.09)
Step 3: Moderator
Conflict Resolution Norms			0.56 (0.08)	0.57 (0.08)**
Step 4: Interaction
Social Class Diversity × Conflict Resolution Norms				0.28 (0.12)*

Note. N = 132 teams.

p < .05. **p < .01.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the help of our associate editor and two anonymous reviewers for their excellent feedback which improved the manuscript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The contributions of the second author were supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, through Grant UL1 TR002014. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

The remaining author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Jason A. Williamson

Notes

Author Biographies

Jason A. Williamson received his PhD in Industrial-Organizational psychology and Pennsylvania State University and is a leadership consultant at Spencer Stuart where he conducts developmental assessments for c-suite executives around the world. In addition to specializing in leadership assessment, he also facilitates top team effectiveness workshops.

Susan Mohammed, PhD, is a professor of Industrial-Organizational psychology at the Pennsylvania State University and leads the Teams, Cognition, and Time (TCaT) lab. Her research focuses on teams and leadership with a special emphasis on team cognition, team composition/diversity, and the role of time in team and leadership research.

Alexander S. McKay, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship at Virginia Commonwealth University, USA. His research uses innovative analytical approaches to study daily work experiences, interpersonal work relationships, and creativity/innovation.

Linda C. Angell is Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management at American University of Sharjah, UAE. Linda’s career spans 30 years as an academic and administrator in public and private universities and organizations in the UAE, NZ, USA and U.K. She holds: D.B.A, Boston University; M.B.A. Magna, Babson College; and B.A. Summa, UMASS Amherst.

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