STRIDE: Benefits of Diversity

Scott Blanchard & Ken Blanchard, 2013
from website, "There’s a right way and a wrong way to push for organizational change. Here’s how to avoid backlash, and get everybody involved in the process."

Eve Fine & Jo Hendelsman, 2010
This booklet summarizes research on the benefits and challenges of diversity and provides suggestions for realizing the benefits. Its goal is to help create a climate in which all individuals feel included, valued, respected treated fairly.
It is produced by The Women in Science & Engineering Leadership Institute (WISELI), a research center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. WISELI was formed in 2002 with funding from the National Science Foundation’s ADVANCE: Institutional Transformation program.

Niclas L Erhardt, James D Werbel, & Charles B Shrader, 2003
This study examines the relationship between demographic diversity on boards of directors with firm financial performance. This relationship is examined using 1993 and 1998 financial performance data (return on asset and investment) and the percentage of women and minorities on boards of directors for 127 large US companies. Correlation and regression analyses indicate board diversity is positively associated with these financial indicators of firm performance. Implications for both strategic human resource management and future research are discussed.

Richard B Freeman, & Wei Huang, 2015
By examining the ethnic identity of authors in over 2.5 million scientific papers written by US-based authors from 1985 to 2008, we find that persons of similar ethnicity coauthor together more frequently than predicted by their proportion among authors. The greater homophily is associated with publication in lower-impact journals and with fewer citations. Meanwhile, papers with authors in more locations and with longer reference lists get published in higher-impact journals and receive more citations. These findings suggest that diversity in inputs by author ethnicity, location, and references leads to greater contributions to science as measured by impact factors and citations.

Confronting Racism establishes a unique link between public discourse on race and social scientific analysis. Covering theory, implications for policy and applications to education, employment, crime, politics, and health, the book provides a collective account of the variety of racial outcomes and dynamics that result from the complex and multifaceted nature of racism and race relations.

Credit Suisse Research Institute, 2014
The Gender 3000 report series, published by the Credit Suisse Research Institute, provides unique and comprehensive information on gender diversity within the governance and executive leadership teams of over 3,000 companies.

This paper develops theory about the conditions under which cultural diversity enhances or detracts from work group functioning. From qualitative research in three culturally diverse organizations, we identified three different perspectives on workforce diversity: the integration-and-learning perspective, the access-and-legitimacy perspective, and the discrimination-and-fairness perspective. The perspective on diversity a work group held influenced how people expressed and managed tensions related to diversity, whether those who had been traditionally underrepresented in the organization felt respected and valued by their colleagues, and how people interpreted the meaning of their racial identity at work. These, in turn, had implications for how well the work group and its members functioned. All three perspectives on diversity had been successful in motivating managers to diversify their staffs, but only the integration-and-learning perspective provided the rationale and guidance needed to achieve sustained benefits from diversity. By identifying the conditions that intervene between the demographic composition of a work group and its functioning, our research helps to explain mixed results on the relationship between cultural diversity and work group out-comes.

Harold A Black, 2020
Black, Harold A. (2020). Diversity training promotes racism instead of combating it. Knox news, 28 October 2020.

Cristian L. Dezsö & David Gaddis Ross, 2012
We argue that female representation in top management brings informational and social diversity benefits to the top management team, enriches the behaviors exhibited by managers throughout the firm, and motivates women in middle management. The result should be improved managerial task performance and thus better firm performance. We test our theory using 15 years of panel data on the top management teams of the S&P 1,500 firms. We find that female representation in top management improves firm performance but only to the extent that a firm's strategy is focused on innovation, in which context the informational and social benefits of gender diversity and the behaviors associated with women in management are likely to be especially important for managerial task performance.

Pierpaolo Parrotta, Dario Pozzoli, & Mariola Pytlikova, 2014
Using a matched employer-employee data-set, we analyze how workforce diversity in terms of cultural background, education and demographic characteristics affects the productivity of firms in Denmark. Implementing a structural estimation of the firms' production function (Ackerberg et al. 2006), we find that labor diversity in education significantly enhances a firm's value added. Conversely, diversity in ethnicity and demographics induces negative effects on firm productivity. Therefore, the negative effects, which are derived from the communication and integration costs associated with a more culturally and demographically diverse workforce, seem to outweigh the positive effects of creativity and knowledge spillovers.

Alina Lungeanu & Noshir S. Contractor, 2014
This study examines the influence of different types of diversity, both observable and unobservable, on the creation of innovative ideas. Our framework draws on theory and research on information processing, social categorization, coordination, and homophily to posit the influence of cognitive, gender, and country diversity on innovation. Our longitudinal model is based on a unique data set of 1,354 researchers who helped create the new scientific field of oncofertility, by collaborating on 469 publications over a 4-year period. We capture the differences among researchers along cognitive, country, and gender dimensions, as well as examine how the resulting diversity or homophily influences the formation of collaborative innovation networks. We find that innovation, operationalized as publishing in a new scientific discipline, benefits from both homophily and diversity. Homophily in country of residence and working with prior collaborators help reduce uncertainty in the interactions associated with innovation, while diversity in knowledge enables the recombinant knowledge required for innovation.

Anthony Lising Antonio, Mitchell J Chang, Kenji Hakuta, David A Kenny, Shana Levin, & Jeffrey F Milem, 2004
An experiment varying the racial (Black, White) and opinion composition in small-group discussions was conducted with college students (N = 357) at three universities to test for effects on the perceived novelty of group members' contributions to discussion and on participants' integrative complexity. Results showed that racial and opinion minorities were both perceived as contributing to novelty. Generally positive effects on integrative complexity were found when the groups had racial- and opinion-minority members and when members reported having racially diverse friends and classmates. The findings are discussed in the context of social psychological theories of minority influence and social policy implications for affirmative action. The research supports claims about the educational significance of race in higher education, as well as the complexity of the interaction of racial diversity with contextual and individual factors.

Orlando Richard, Amy McMillan, Ken Chadwick, & Sean Dwyer, 2003
This study explored racial diversity’s influence on firm performance. A national sample of 177 banks was used to first test competing hypotheses supported by the resource-based view of the firm and social identity theory that posited positive and negative direct effects, respectively, of racial diversity on organizational performance. No support was found for either prediction. However, a contingency theory-based hypothesis was supported. A moderation effect indicated that racial diversity’s association with performance was contingent on firms’ level of innovation. Specifically, racial diversity enhanced performance for banks pursuing an innovation strategy, whereas for banks low in innovation, performance declined. The results suggest that a racially diverse workforce in conjunction with an innovation-focused business strategy may provide firms a competitive advantage. This study thus supports a contingency/resource-based perspective that states that racial diversity, as a knowledge-based resource, needs to be set in an appropriate context to fully realize its potential benefits.

Sangeeta Badal, & James K Harter, 2014
This study investigates the relationship between gender diversity and financial performance at the business-unit level and whether employee engagement moderates this relationship. Using more than 800 business units from two companies belonging to two different industries, we found that employee engagement and gender diversity independently predict financial performance at the business-unit level. One implication is that making diversity an organizational priority and creating an engaged culture for the workforce may result in cumulative financial benefits.

Sean Dwyer, Orlando C Richard, & Ken Chadwick, 2003
This study examines the influence of gender diversity in management on firm performance. The management group examined was composed of all firm members considered to be managers and officials, a broader level of analysis than past management-level diversity research that has primarily focused on groups composed of top management team (TMT) members. Adopting contingency and configurational approaches, gender diversity's interactions with two key organizational variables—organizational culture and growth orientation—were evaluated against organizational-level performance measures. Supporting contingency theory and configurational theory, the results suggest that gender diversity's effects at the management level is conditional on, that is, moderated by, the firm's strategic orientation, the organizational culture in which it resides, and/or the multivariate interaction among these variables. These findings help reconcile conflicting results of past diversity–performance research by suggesting that an appropriately configured and supportive organizational environment may need to be in place before the beneficial aspects of gender diversity can be fully realized.

L. Taylor Phillips & Brian S. Lowery, 2015
Racial inequity continues to plague America, yet many Whites still doubt the existence of racial advantages, limiting progress and cooperation. What happens when people are faced with evidence that their group benefits from privilege? We suggest such evidence will be threatening and that people will claim hardships to manage this threat. These claims of hardship allow individuals to deny that they personally benefit from privilege, while still accepting that group-level inequity exists. Experiments 1a and 1b show that Whites exposed to evidence of racial privilege claim to have suffered more personal life hardships than those not exposed to evidence of privilege. Experiment 2 shows that self-affirmation reverses the effect of exposure to evidence of privilege on hardship claims, implicating the motivated nature of hardship claims. Further, affirmed participants acknowledge more personal privilege, which is associated with increased support for inequity-reducing policies. •We explore why and how Whites deny the existence of racial privilege•We introduce belief in personal privilege as important to psychology of privilege•When given privilege evidence, Whites claim more life hardships•Whites use hardship claims to deny personally benefitting from privilege•Self-affirmed Whites acknowledge personal privilege and support equality policies

Nicholas Lemann, 2018
For if a degree from a top college benefits those who receive it as much as Bowen and Bok clearly demonstrate, then those passed over for admission to those colleges really do have cause for complaint. Because the Supreme Court had declined to hear the Hopwood case, the law of the land on affirmative action was one thing in the Fifth Circuit, which had decided the case, and another elsewhere, where the Supreme Court’s close and carefully limited ruling, which permitted affirmative action to continue, in the 1978 Bakke v. University of California case (that’s where the term "diversity" came from) still prevailed. [...]all the political and legal challenges to affirmative action, and most of the intellectual critiques as well, were based on the letter and spirit of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964: the idea that it is uniquely offensive to take someone’s race into account in making a consequential decision. [...]perhaps most important, affirmative action had come on the heels of another major change in the way elite universities, which have remained prominent for centuries by changing constantly, define themselves. [...]though, the adoption of standardized tests in elite university admissions wound up increasing both their perceived openness to all and the perceived value of their degrees, and that led to an ever more intense competition for a limited number of admissions slots.

Katherine W. Phillips , 2014
The article discusses the benefits of diversity in organizations. The author notes that research has shown social diversity in a group can cause discomfort, a lack of trust, and lower communication, adding that research has also shown that socially diverse groups are more innovative than homogeneous groups. Topics include the concept of informational diversity, the impact of racial diversity on small decision-making groups, and how diversity promotes hard work, diligence, and creativity.

Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng & Peter F Halpin, 2016
The demographic divide between teachers and students is of growing public concern. However, few studies have explicitly addressed the common argument that students, and particularly minority students, have more favorable perceptions of minority versus White teachers. Using data from the Measure of Effective Teaching study, we find that students perceive minority teachers more favorably than White teachers. There is mixed evidence that race matching is linked with more favorable student perceptions. These findings underscore the importance of minority teacher recruitment and retention.

Frank Bruni, 2015<
Bruni, F. (2015). The Lie About College Diversity. The New York Times, 12 December 2015.

Patrick, F McKay, Derek R Avery, & Mark A Morris, 2008
Using data from a sample of 6,130 workers employed in 743 stores of a large, U.S. retail organization, this study assessed whether diversity climate moderated mean racial‐ethnic differences in employee sales performance. Findings indicated Whites exhibited significantly higher sales performance than Hispanics but not Blacks, as moderated by diversity climate. As hypothesized, racial‐ethnic disparities disfavoring Blacks and Hispanics were largest in stores with less supportive diversity climates and smallest in stores with highly pro‐diversity climates. Financial analysis of these interactions revealed sizable increments in sales per hour in response to effective diversity management, with strong organizational bottom‐line implications. Limitations of the study and future research needs are noted.

Tessa L Dover, Brenda Major, & Cheryl R Kaiser, 2016
Members of high-status groups may perceive pro-diversity messages from organizations as threatening to their group's status. Two initial studies (N=322) demonstrate that when imagining applying for a job, whites—and not ethnic/racial minorities—expressed more concerns about being treated unfairly and about anti-white discrimination when the company mentioned (vs. did not mention) its pro-diversity values. In a third experiment, white men (N=77) participated in a hiring simulation. Participants applying to the pro-diversity company exhibited greater cardiovascular threat, expressed more concerns about being discriminated against, and made a poorer impression during the interview relative to white men applying to a neutral company. These effects were not moderated by individual differences in racial identification, racial attitudes, or system fairness beliefs. These findings suggest that high-status identities may be more sensitive to identity threats than commonly assumed, and that this sensitivity is robust to differences in higher-order beliefs and attitudes. •Pro-diversity (vs. neutral) messages seem unfair to whites, not minorities.•White men underwent a hiring scenario at a pro-diversity (vs. neutral) company.•We measured cardiovascular threat, discrimination concerns, interview impressions.•More threat & concerns, worse impressions in pro-diversity (vs. neutral) company•Findings were not moderated by several individual difference variables.

D. Nelson, 2005
The first national and most comprehensive analysis to date of tenured and tenure track faculty in the " top 50 " departments of science and engineering disciplines shows that females and minorities are significantly underrepre-sented. • There are few tenured and tenure-track women faculty in these departments in research universities, even though a growing number of women are completing their PhDs. Qualified women are not going to science and engineering departments.

Peggy McIntosh, 2020
From one of the world's leading voices on white privilege and anti-racism work comes this collection of essays on complexities of privilege and power. Each of the four parts illustrates Peggy McIntosh's practice of combining personal and systemic understandings to focus on power in unusual ways. Part I includes McIntosh's classic and influential essays on privilege, or systems of unearned advantage that correspond to systems of oppression. Part II helps readers to understand that feelings of fraudulence may be imposed by our hierarchical cultures rather than by any actual weakness or personal shortcomings. Part III presents McIntosh's Interactive Phase Theory, highlighting five different world views, or attitudes about power, that affect school curriculum, cultural values, and decisions on taking action. The book concludes with powerful insights from SEED, a peer-led teacher development project that enables individuals and institutions to work collectively toward equity and social justice. This book is the culmination of forty years of McIntosh's intellectual and organizational work.

Samuel R Sommers, 2006
This research examines the multiple effects of racial diversity on group decision making. Participants deliberated on the trial of a Black defendant as members of racially homogeneous or heterogeneous mock juries. Half of the groups were exposed to pretrial jury selection questions about racism and half were not. Deliberation analyses supported the prediction that diverse groups would exchange a wider range of information than all-White groups. This finding was not wholly attributable to the performance of Black participants, as Whites cited more case facts, made fewer errors, and were more amenable to discussion of racism when in diverse versus all-White groups. Even before discussion, Whites in diverse groups were more lenient toward the Black defendant, demonstrating that the effects of diversity do not occur solely through information exchange. The influence of jury selection questions extended previous findings that blatant racial issues at trial increase leniency toward a Black defendant.

O. C. Richard, 2000
Although "valuing diversity" has become a watchword, field research on the impact of a culturally diverse workforce on organizational performance has not been forthcoming. Invoking a resource-based framework, in this study I examined the relationships among cultural (racial) diversity, business strategy, and firm performance in the banking industry. Racial diversity interacted with business strategy in determining firm performance measured in three different ways, as productivity, return on equity, and market performance. The results demonstrate that cultural diversity does in fact add value and, within the proper context, contributes to firm competitive advantage.

Goce Andrevski, Orlando C Richard, Jason D Shaw, & Walter J Ferrier, 2014
The authors examine the mediating role of competitive intensity in the relationship between managerial racial diversity and firm performance (i.e., market share gain and average stock return). Racial diversity relates to firm performance via firms’ capacity to compete intensively (i.e., to introduce new competitive actions frequently). An analysis reveals that environmental munificence moderates competitive intensity’s mediating effect: Racially diverse management groups compete more intensively and perform better when they compete in munificent environments. The authors also find support for a moderated mediation model that simultaneously tests all components of their framework.
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Denise Lewin Loyd, Cynthia S Wang, Katherine W Phillips, & Robert B Lount, 2013
A purported downside of social category diversity is decreased relationship focus (i.e., one’s focus on establishing a positive social bond with a coworker). However, we argue that this lack of relationship focus serves as a central mechanism that improves information processing even prior to interaction and, ultimately, decision-making performance in diverse settings. We introduce the construct of premeeting elaboration (i.e., the extent to which individuals consider their own and others’ perspectives in the anticipation of an interaction) and explore its link with social category diversity and relationship focus. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that when disagreement occurs, social category diversity increases premeeting elaboration, with relationship focus as a central causal mechanism. Experiment 3 shows that premeeting elaboration has important implications for performance: disagreeing dyads with social category diversity elaborate more prior to meeting and, as a result, perform better on a decision-making task than those with social category homogeneity. We discuss the value of studying early-stage interaction and propose a reconsideration of the “downside” of social category diversity.

Katherine W Phillips, Gregory B Northcraft, & Margaret A Neale, 2006
We examined how surface-level diversity (based on race) and deep-level similarities influenced three-person decision-making groups on a hidden-profile task. Surface-level homogeneous groups perceived their information to be less unique and spent less time on the task than surface-level diverse groups. When the groups were given the opportunity to learn about their deep-level similarities prior to the task, group members felt more similar to one another and reported greater perceived attraction, but this was more true for surface-level homogeneous than surface-level diverse groups. Surface-level homogeneous groups performed slightly better after discovering deep-level similarities, but discovering deep-level similarities was not helpful for surface-level diverse groups, who otherwise outperformed surface-level homogeneous groups. We discuss the implications of this research for managing diversity in the workplace.

Frank Dobbin & Alexandra Kalev, 2016
Businesses started caring a lot more about diversity after a series of high-profile lawsuits rocked the financial industry. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Morgan Stanley shelled out $54 million -- and Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch more than $100 million each -- to settle sex discrimination claims. In 2007, Morgan was back at the table, facing a new class action, which cost the company $46 million. It's no wonder that Wall Street firms now require new hires to sign arbitration contracts agreeing not to join class actions. They have also expanded training and other diversity programs. But on balance, equality isn't improving in financial services or elsewhere. It shouldn't be surprising that most diversity programs aren't increasing diversity. Despite a few new bells and whistles, courtesy of big data, companies are basically doubling down on the same approaches they've used since the 1960s -- which often make things worse, not better.