Diversity, Social Goods Provision, and Performance on the Field

July 17, 2018

In 2014, I published an article entitled "Diversity, Social Goods Provision, and Performance in the Firm."  In that article, I analyzed data from a large firm who had offices in many US and foreign cities.  The data contained information on the diversity of each office (in various dimensions), measures of happiness and esprit de corps of the workers, and measures of the output and efficiency of each office.  The results of the analysis were that the more homogeneous offices were happier, but, crucially, despite being happier, were less productive.  People enjoy working with other people like themselves but the group actually performs better when it is more diverse.  In a draft of the paper---not sure if this example made it into the published version---I used a fictitious baseball team comprised entirely of catchers as an illustration.  They might love getting together over beers to discuss their preferred brand of chest protector or the finer points of catching the knuckler, but on the field, they will be a disaster.  As human beings, we are, perhaps, programmed to prefer those like us, but by allowing or even forcing diversity and integration, we become stronger and better.  (As an aside, for the first and probably only time in my career, a piece of my research was touted by Rush Limbaugh on his radio program.  It is interesting to note, though, that he only mentioned the first of the two results:  fake news by omission.)      

Reuters photo of Les Bleus, accompanying article entitled "Les Bleus are a mini-UN of soccer talent."

I tend to be quite hesitant, as are most researchers, to oversell or over-generalize what are, admittedly, results special and particular to one empirical setting.  This is a blog, though, so I may take the liberty of painting with a slightly broader brush.  And I thought immediately of my results as soon as Les Bleus won the World Cup.  The members of France's national team come from different socio-economic strata, ethnic traditions, and racial backgrounds.  They represent an immigrant-friendly, pluralistic ideal, and they proved themselves the best in the world on the playing field.  I know little about the personal relationships among the players---perhaps they are just as happy with their diversity as their fans are with their on-field results, or perhaps there were frictions or tensions or difficulties associated with their widely differing backgrounds.  In any case, though, one of the enduring stories of this team is that diversity works.  I am deeply saddened that that lesson, one that America arguably taught the world, is now experiencing a skeptical reception there.
     
And the story of my paper, broadly speaking, is two-fold:  Diversity is hard and awkward and unpleasant, perhaps.  If, however, we work past the difficult parts, the payoff---in corporate profits or soccer wins or maybe even economic growth of an entire country---can be great.