Teams are of increasing importance to accomplish complex work in organizations. Research on entering organizations and the teams within them seems to assume a false newcomer-incumbent dichotomy whereby entry is either advantageous or disadvantageous. We challenge these assumptions and conceptualize outcomes of entry timing as a matter of degree. We focus on global virtual teams (GVTs) because they are becoming more prevalent in work organizations and because GVTs diversity is often portrayed as offering a unique set of advantages. Our research studies the association between the team members’ timing of entry and their team contributions. To predict this association we integrate insight from literature on newcomer entry and socialization and role theory. This integration predicts a U-shaped association. Specifically, we hypothesized that the earliest of entrants contribute the most while the latest of entrants contribute more than those entering in between. We also suggest that team diversity alters this association. In applying random coefficient modeling to 304 GVTs of 1913 individuals, we find support for our hypotheses. We conclude by discussing implications for both scholars and practitioners as well as limitations of our work.
