Simply building a team “Avengers” does not guarantee a win

Abstract

Team-centered organizational structure is spreading, and firms temporarily operate teams to complete projects. As the team becomes more important, interests have continued on team composition to improve team effectiveness. When a team is composed of functional experts, functional diversity affects team effectiveness. However, prior studies' results of the relationship between functional diversity and team performance are confusing. This study considers the causes of those controversial results, then proposes alternative conceptualization and measurement of functional diversity. An empirical study was conducted on the functional diversity of 2,194 teams composed of 898 players with the top 0.01% of Korea's League of Legends (LoL). As a result, the dominant function diversity constructed based on experience and competence influenced team performance through different paths. Task design fully mediated the dominant function diversity and team performance. In an organization, team managers assign tasks to ensure team members utilize expertise to reflect the functional diversity, should promote team members' interactions by overlapping tasks.