In this video I will show that diversity is not necessarily a strength for your work team.
It is not a silver bullet, it is not the magical answer that's gonna solve all our problems.
There are some situations where certain types of diversity may be useful, but let's not
hype up diversity into something that it's not.
You disagree with me?
Watch this video.
Empirical research shows that diversity is good for productivity; empirical research
shows that diversity is bad for productivity.
So, which one is it?
If you run a company, do you want your staff to be diverse or homogenous?
Which one is better in your opinion?
And why is that?
In this video, let's take a closer look at the diversity-performance relationship.
First, let's be clear about what diversity is.
If you've got Americans, Chinese, and Germans working together in one team, that's certainly
a diverse team and this diversity is likely visible -- and it's based on nationality.
Now, another team is composed of only Americans, but some of them are young and others are
old; some are republicans and others are democrats; some are religious and others are non-religious;
some are gay others are straight; some are introverted and others are extraverted; some
are married with children and others are happy singles.
So, this second team is also highly diverse, not in terms of nationality, but in terms
of other important indicators.
So, when we talk about diversity, we need to differentiate among three kinds of diversity
-- surface level diversity: age, gender, race, nationality, ethnicity; job-related diversity:
area of expertise and function, professional history and background; and deep level diversity:
personality characters, values, and political beliefs or religious beliefs, things of that
nature.
As we will see later, these three types of diversity are related to satisfaction and
productivity in different ways.
This is because some teams can SEEM very diverse on the surface but in fact involve much deep
level similarity while others teams may seem to be homogenous on the surface but are in
fact highly diverse in terms of deep level indicators.
So, that's the first thing -- the three levels of diversity.
Second, we also need to be clear about what we mean by work performance and how it can
be measured.
And this is especially important if we want to make an EMPIRICAL argument about when diversity
is good or bad for work performance.
Researchers distinguish work performance in terms of subjective and objective measurements.
Subjective measures can be further subcategorized into employee self reports or manager ratings;
these ratings can be gathered from either inside or outside the team, in other words,
subjective performance ratings can be internal or external, and the performance rater can
be either blind to the team composition or they may know the level of diversity involved
in the team.
And this knowing or not knowing about the team composition is an important consideration
because rater bias is a key issue when it comes to diversity research.
Objective measures are more straightforward -- they are, for example, sales volumes, production
figures, or revenue numbers, things like that, things that can be directly and objectively
measured and quantified to represent performance.
So, that's the second thing -- about how performance is measured in diversity research also matters.
Third, in addition to measurement issues, we also need to take into account performance
in terms of its nature, specifically, research shows task complexity and innovation to be
of particular importance.
This is due to an inherent argument associated with why diversity matters to task performance.
Whether people are arguing for or against diversity, their arguments tend to boil down
to the core notion that diversity is a rich informational resource.
This resource can be very useful because it can enable the company to better understand
the complex market place and customer demands, or it can be counterproductive because too
much information and too many perspectives can lead to substantial disagreements and
conflicts.
But the argument remains -- diversity matters because it is an incredibly rich informational
resource.
So, given this line of thinking regarding diversity being an informational resource,
it is logical to assume and to have found that task complexity and the extent to which
the task involves innovation and creativity would matter to the discussion of diversity
and what kind of diversity is productive or not.
So, this is the third thing -- performance needs to be considered in terms of task complexity
and innovation levels.
So, now, having clarified these three important aspects of the diversity-performance relationship,
let's take a look at empirical findings.
As I have indicated at the beginning of this video, on the surface, the findings from empirical
studies on the diversity-performance relationship appear to be wildly inconsistent.
And the reason or that is exactly what we just talked about -- one study may have measured
surface level diversity in relation to subjective employee self report of performance whereas
another study measured deep level diversity in relation to supervisor rating of employee
work performance.
So, of course their findings would be different; it is logical that they would have found different
things and drawn different conclusions.
As a result, instead of looking at any particular empirical studies, let's take a look at meta-analyses
on the diversity-performance relationship, and there are multiple ones.
Interestingly, the findings of these meta analyses are somewhat inconsistent, too.
But for now, I believe I've found a rather definitive meta analytical study because it
is the most recent one, it is also published in a highly respectable journal, and it incorporated
all the empirical studies that the previous meta analyses used and added additional ones.
And very importantly, this article took into account everything we just talked about.
In fact, many of the things I just talked about were based on this article (instead
of the other way around).
Let's look at the most important findings of this meta analytical study.
I am just going to list out the most important findings and you can pause at any time and
read more even more closely.
SURFACE LEVEL DIVERSITY Negatively related with subjectively measured
performance Unrelated with objectively measured performance
Unrelated with high complexity task performance
JOB RELATED DIVERSITY Positively related with performance rated
by external leaders Positively related with high complexity task
performance Unrelated with internally rated performance
(either team member or leader)
DEEP LEVEL Negatively related with high complexity task
performance
In terms of in role vs. innovative task performance:
Both surface level and job related diversity clusters positively related with innovative
performance No relationship among studies examining diversity-performance
link focusing on in role performance Job related diversity more strongly and positively
related with innovative performance than surface level diversity
So, feel free to pause here and look at these key findings more closely.
There are additional findings that the study reported which are not included here.
The most important conclusions from this meta analytical study are the following.
Key conclusions:
1.
Subjective self-report measures of performance are problematic.
Some of the misperceptions we had with regard to diversity's effect on performance can in
fact be attributed to the issue of subjective measures of performance.
For instance, researchers had long held the opinion that surface level diversity was bad
for performance.
That's not because previous meta analytical findings were incorrect, but rather, that's
because of rater biases.
When we separate out the sources of performance ratings like this Van Dijk et al. study did,
it became clear that surface level diversity essentially had no bearing on objectively
rated performance.
All this indicates that objective performance ratings are more accurate, and when objective
ratings are hard to come by, external performance ratings provided by individuals blind to the
work team composition are more reliable than performance raters who are aware of the team
composition as that has also been found to tend to bias the performance ratings.
2.
With greater task complexity, job related diversity, not surface level diversity, is
more beneficial for performance.
This 2012 meta analysis found task complexity to be a moderator for the diversity-performance
relationship.
This meta analysis found that the only positive relationship with performance was for job
related diversity in complex tasks.
And this is possibly because job-related diversity functioned as a rich informational resource
which is necessary and beneficial for complex tasks.
3.
Diversity is more positively related with innovative rather than in role performance.
This is also in line with the informational resources proposition in that the rich informational
resources of diversity are particularly relevant for creative and innovative behaviors and
processes at work.
In fact, the diverse perspectives and opinions driven by all levels of diversity appear to
be helpful for stimulating out-of-the box thinking.
However, it is important to note that diversity's effect on in role performance is weaker in
comparison to innovative performance.
So, once again, to sum up -- these are the most important take-aways: subjective performance
ratings are likely to be biased, surface level diversity has little bearing on performance;
job related diversity is the type of diversity which appears to be the most useful for complex
and innovative performances, but not so much for in role performance.
Now, on a different but related subject -- I made several other videos about teambuilding,
many people seem to think teambuilding is magical, it's going to solve all team problems
and increase performance.
Well, that is not true.
And the same goes for diversity.
Diversity is not the magical answer to all team problems, it is not a silver bullet,
but at the same time, it needs not be a problem as long as it is properly managed.
Effective team performance depends on a large number of factors, no amount of diversity,
or teambuilding for that matter, can replace genuine talents and qualifications, strong
motivation and desire for success, proper guidance, management, leadership, as well
as attractive compensation, rewards, and benefits.
So, let's not hype diversity up into something it simply is not.
This video discusses empirical and meta analytical findings on the diversity-performance relationship.
It is not to be taken out of context.
Diversity serves many greater values and purposes in organizations and societies other than
improving task performances per se.
This presentation specifically focused on employee diversity-performance relationship
in work organizations.
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