New Publication: Leadership and Ethnic Diversity in Health Care Teams

A new article in Health Care Management Review — a leading journal in healthcare research — explores how ethnically diverse health care teams can achieve high performance.

The publication is authored by MMTC member Timur Uman, MMTC affiliated researchers Manuela Schmidt and Norbert Steigenberger, together with Diana Nichitelea (Värnamo Hospital) and Magnus Berndtzon (Center for Improvement in Healthcare).

The study draws on video and survey data from 59 clinical team simulations in Sweden. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis, the authors identify how leadership and team characteristics influence performance.

Key insights include:

• Shared leadership enables diverse, larger, and less experienced teams to excel.

• Small, experienced teams perform well with shared leadership, regardless of diversity.

• Laissez-faire leadership is ineffective across all team types.

• Autocratic leadership benefits only small, homogeneous teams but undermines diverse ones.

The research offers practical guidance for managers and hospital leadership teams on how to effectively lead diverse teams, while also contributing to MMTC’s focus on diversity & inclusion, leadership, and organizational transformation.

Link to Article External link, opens in new window.