| dc.description.abstract | Researchers have indicated that corporations, which can adjust their strategies for the turbulent environment, should be the most successful firms in the future. When firms are seeking for the adjustable capability, they may look for the concept – a learning organization, which is brought by Peter Senge(1990). In a learning organization, workers are not the traditional employees anymore. They can learn things continuously, seek to get beyond themselves, and cooperate with others to create organizational effectiveness.
In a learning organization, workers should work with others tightly and they will learn from each other. Thus, the diversity workforce may become one of the sources, which may promote a learning organization. On the other hand, teams are regarded as the basis of a learning organization. However, team diversity may not always enhance team performance as previous research suggested. Thus, it is interesting to investigate to what extent team diversity may influence a firm to become a learning organization.
A mail survey is conducted to explore the mentioned research question. Seven hundred sixty questionnaires are sent out to five companies across three different industries. Four hundred and sixty two individual questionnaires are returned, and those come up with total one hundred and two teams. At last, due to some missing data, there are seventy and nine teams from four hundred and twenty seven valid individual responses.
The findings of this study show that the diversity of team members’ tenure background and age diversity have significantly positive effect on various dimensions of learning organization. These two findings are opposite to our previous prediction. However, as theory predicted, the diversity of team members’ work value on innovation and risk bearing has negative effect on the dependent variables. Thus, these findings may provide some empirical evidences that team diversity may not always contribute to the formation of a learning organization. | en_US |