Artykuł opisuje badania porównujące sukcesy i innowacyjność przedsiębiorstw w zależności od różnorodności, różnicując pomiędzy różnorodnością interpersonalną a intrapersonalną.
Wyniki sugerują, że samo zebranie zespołu różnorodnych osób nie spowoduje wzrostu skuteczności działań, a wręcz może mieć efekt osłabiający wyniki. Prawdziwa wartość różnorodności objawia się dopiero, gdy osoby w zespole mają bogaty wewnętrzny światopogląd (różnorodność intrapersonalna). Innymi słowy, aby zyskać na różnorodności w organizacji zamiast tracić, niezbędna jest aktywna wymiana poglądów i doświadczeń, a nie jedynie tolerowanie różnic w innych.
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“Our findings,” they write, “suggest that communities — whether at the local or national level — whose members draw on a wide range of cultural elements will exhibit, all else equal, a greater capacity for innovation.”
“The broader implications relate to the political sentiment, which I share, that the underrepresentation of disadvantaged groups is politically and morally indefensible,” Goldberg says. “And many people who promote this argument have said cultural diversity is good for firms.”
The diversity of ideas embodied in a demographically varied workforce can catalyze growth if they are exchanged between people. But the fact that the opposite could occur — that these divergent ideas could remain siloed in different demographic groups, potentially driving a wedge between employees and long-term organizational success — should be enough to give pause.
“With few exceptions, people don’t change their gender; people don’t change their race; but what they do change is how they think about the world,” Goldberg says. “If you want to create a more diverse workplace, and want that diversity to be congruent with positive outcomes, then organizations must find ways for this heterogeneity to inhere within people as opposed to between people.”
Goldberg says it is “essential” to develop a true understanding of how cultural diversity operates “so that we achieve these overarching moral and political goals more effectively — so that we can create and work in a company, and in a world, that is more diverse but that is not also falling apart.”
