How Cultural Heterogeneity Relates To A Business Case For Diversity [Research Breakdown]

How does Diversity, Inclusion and Culture relate to organisational performance?

Find out about the relationship between cultural diversity and organisational performance in a way that is going to change the way you think about it forever.

Here are some key messages from this episode

• The unusual relationship between cultural diversity and organisational performance
• When Diversity is conducive to organisational success and when it is detrimental
• The Trade Off Between Cultural Diversity and Performance

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Here are some key takeaways from this episode

Cultural Diversity can get in the way of coordinating tasks

“The first emphasizes cultural homogeneity, suggesting when there’s cultural diversity in an organisation. Different beliefs and Different expectations can get in the way of people coordinating tasks. This suggests we want people to have enough cultural agreement to get a job done.”

Cultural Diversity is great for innovation

“you get access to a broad array of cultural resources, this means the organization is assumed to have greater capacity for creativity and innovation especially in uncertain and competitive environments”

Cultural Diversity has dual aspects: Interpersonal and Intrapersonal

“The paper refers to this as interpersonal heterogeneity; this is the sort of diversity that organisations are typically trying to promote. People with different backgrounds and different views.”

Here are some resources so you can go deeper

Duality in Diversity: How Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Cultural Heterogeneity Relate to Firm Performance

Kenny, E. J., & Briner, R. B. (2007). Ethnicity and behaviour in organizations: A review of British research. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 80(3), 437–457.

Kenny, E. J., & Briner, R. B. (2013). Increases in salience of ethnic identity at work: The roles of ethnic assignation and ethnic identification. Human Relations, 66(5), 725–748.

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