When and how group diversity facilitate innovativeness? The roles of knowledge heterogeneity and governance

Recruiting a group of people from diverse backgrounds does not necessarily ensure collective innovativeness. This paper examines two issues regarding the interplay among professional (i.e., education and functional diversity) background diversity (PBD) as an ex ante composite group attribute, knowledge heterogeneity (KH) as collective knowledge structure, and knowledge governance (KG) as a managerial mechanism, for explaining collective innovativeness emergence. First, the transformation from PBD to KH, and then to group innovativeness is investigated. Second, the effects of KG in such transformational relationships is examined. Data were collected at multiple time points and analysed. Results demonstrate that PBD may impact group innovativeness only indirectly through the mediation of the deeper-level and ex post KH. Moreover, knowledge governance moderates such aforementioned mediation effect. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.