Limited access Past event
Department of Economics Brown Bag with Dr Margaret Leighton Team Diversity and Output in Non-Routine Creative Tasks
Abstract: Modern labour markets increasingly rely on teamwork for tasks that require creative thinking, yet little is known about how such creative output is produced. We exploit the randomised allocation of first-year undergraduate students to project groups to examine how diversity in team members' backgrounds affects the creativity of their collaborative work. Each group produced a short video as part of their coursework. Grounded in psychological theories of creativity, we use human raters to assess the creative quality of these videos. Our results show that diversity in country background—a proxy for ethnic diversity—enhances creative performance. The academic quality of the videos is not affected by this measure, suggesting that the factors driving creative team performance differ from those underlying other aspects of performance.