Cultural Diversity at Work: The Effects of Diversity Perspectives on Work Group Processes and Outcomes

Abstract

The order of authorship bears no relation to the authors' relative contribution to the ideas in this paper; they produced the ideas in full collaboration. This research was funded by grants from the Ford Foundation and the Harvard Business School Division of Research. We are grateful to our colleagues in the FSC Research Group-Elaine Backman, Herminia Ibarra, Maureen Scully, and Kathleen Valley-for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We also thank Pamela Ellis, Russell Peace, Dalia Radley-Kingsley, and Rose Miller for their assistance with data collection. Finally, we thank Linda Johanson, Rod Kramer, Joe Porac, and the anonymous ASQ reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.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-andlearning 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 outcomes.0 American management literature, both popular (e.g., Thomas, 1991;Morrison, 1992) and scholarly (e.g., Jackson et al., 1992; Cox, 1993), is rife with advice that managers should increase workforce diversity to enhance work group effectiveness. Empirical research on whether and how diversity is actually related to work group functioning is limited, however, and the evidence is mixed, depending in part on what kinds of differences constitute the "diversity" in question (see Milliken and Martins, 1996; Pelled, 1996, for reviews). Researchers have examined the impact of diversity in identity group memberships, such as race and sex (e.g., Cox, 1993; Jackson and Ruderman, 1995); organizational group memberships, such as hierarchical position or organizational function (e.g., Bantel and Jackson, 1989; Ancona and Caldwell, 1992); and individual characteristics, such as idiosyncratic attitudes, values, and preferences (e.g., Hoffman, 1959; Meglino, Ravlin, and Adkins, 1989; Bochner and Hesketh, 1994). Although certain types of diversity appear to be beneficial, studies...

Introduction to the International Study of Civic and Citizenship Education

“…In this context, school and teaching policies and practices inclusion; and an emphasis on valuing diversity (Ely & Thomas, 2001). Although schools and systems appear to combine elements of each approach, valuing diversity appears to promote student motivation and school belonging (Schachner et al, 2016).…”

What Can You Expect? The Influence of Gender Diversity in Dyads on Work Goal Expectancies and Subsequent Work Commitment

“…in terms of work goals) between the self and a work partner when they expected these differences to occur within the dyad prior to the first collaboration. In that case, people can anticipate this situation (see also Ely & Thomas, 2001;Stasser & Titus, 1985). Thus, we will specifically examine whether expectancies based on gender differences can help people to accept work goal differences between themselves and others they have to work with.…”

Ethnic and gender diversity, process and performance in groups of business students in Sweden

“…Several authors (e.g. Ely and Thomas, 2001;Larkey, 1996) argue that the demographic diversity-process relationship could have a moderating variable such as common values and beliefs, or shared goals that would bare the instrumental importance of the mediator between the two. Thus there might be a possibility that the intervening model we attempted to test lacked the moderating variables that could influence the relationship between ethnic and gender diversity on processes.…”

“…Thus, in future studies it would be interesting to observe not merely the degree of national diversity in teams, but also the combination of different nationalities in the group, graded by their cultural dimension indexes; these could be combined into a group's total score to enable comparison with other groups, or to examine in-group behaviour and its influence on group performance. According to Ely and Thomas (2001), ethnic diversity can result in lower comparability to the outcomes of ethnically homogeneous teams' outcomes, due to the lack of training and development initiatives. It can be assumed that students in our sample were relatively inexperienced and not trained in ethnic diversity assessment, and that they lacked the understanding of problems that could arise from this diversity since the majority of them were first-year students and had not been exposed to work with students of different ethnic backgrounds prior to the course.…”

“…This idea is also supported by the findings of McGurty and Silova (2000), who suggest that social bridging in various forms helps students to overcome certain stereotypes and prejudices and increase various team outcomes. One of the more ambitious ways of dealing with diversity in learning teams and diversity in institutions of higher education is a desirable change in organizational culture, shifting from the traditional methods of dealing with diversity ('discrimination and fairness' and 'access and legitimacy') to a more progressive and learning-based view (Ely and Thomas, 2001). …”