Cultural diversity: a plus for a third of companies

Citation

(1999), "Cultural diversity: a plus for a third of companies", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 20 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.1999.02220gab.001

Cultural diversity: a plus for a third of companies

Cultural diversity: a plus for a third of companies

Keywords: Ethnic groups, Cultural synergies, Teams

Top British companies are increasingly seeing staff with culturally diverse backgrounds as a potential asset in performance terms. A survey from Oxford University Department of Experimental Psychology reveals that a third of the top British companies are actively managing cultural diversity and another 12 per cent plan to do something about it very soon.

The cultural mix includes people from ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, older people, women with families, and different business cultures.

The case for more diversity is strengthened by the finding that - given the right conditions - culturally diverse teams can actually perform better as well as more creatively than teams made up of people with similar backgrounds. The repeated finding by psychologists is that the superior creativity of such teams is usually achieved at some cost to performance, while performance from homogeneous teams is usually at the expense of creativity.

Dr Peter Collett, whose three-part study was funded by the ESRC, conducted two experiments with groups of MBA students, grouping some of them into teams with similar backgrounds and some into groups with diverse backgrounds. All the teams were charged with both designing and implementing set tasks.

The results of the experiments showed that, given at least as much co-operation, solidarity, agreement and commitment between members of the diverse team as would be normal between members of the homogeneous team, the diverse team will perform much better and is able to exploit its creative advantage. The group dynamics of diverse teams, however, are such that mostly such teams do not achieve the same degree of co-operation and agreement, for instance, as teams with similar backgrounds.

The survey of 65 companies, from the top 200 British companies, and their attitudes to cultural diversity revealed some unexpected results. For instance, companies which have a "management of diversity" policy are not necessarily those which have noticeably increased the proportion of their workforce with diverse backgrounds. Their top management is dominated as much by white males (86 per cent) as companies with no diversity policy (87 per cent).

But companies with active diversity policies are more likely to have brought in flexible work arrangements, help with childcare, paternity leave and career breaks.

Details of the survey are available on a special Web site: http: users.ox. uk/~hert0159/diversity/mngdiv.htm

For further information contact: Dr Peter Collett, Department Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford. Tel: 01865 271316; E-mail: peter.collett@psy.ox.ac.uk