Diverse Hands, Aligned Hearts: Ability and Preference Diversity in Team Production

Does diversity in ability and in mutual concern help or hurt team performance? We study a team in which efforts may be complements or substitutes. Holding mean ability and mean relational orientation fixed, we vary the dispersion of each. In horizontal teams, where no one leads, ability diversity raises performance through specialization regardless of the task, whereas diversity in relational orientation lowers it under complementarity and raises it under substitutability—so complementary tasks call for diverse hands but aligned hearts. Holding both attribute gaps fixed, performance is strictly higher when the abler member has the higher relational orientation, and the fully homogeneous team is a saddle point. In vertical teams, where one leads and the other follows, under weak interaction ability diversity remains beneficial regardless of who leads, while the optimal placement of the more prosocial member flips with the task—she should follow when efforts are complements and lead when they are substitutes. Taken together, the results show that the two dimensions of diversity interact and must be designed jointly rather than separately. Measuring relational orientation therefore pays off in both team composition and role assignment.