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> You say you want to promote diversity, but do you? Studies show gender & racially diverse teams perform better. Not aware of any studies into whether divers

> You say you want to promote diversity, but do you? Studies show gender & racially diverse teams perform better. Not aware of any studies into whether diversity of music taste relates to productivity.

teddyh 10y ago
Do studies show causation and not simply correlation?
- richmarr 10y ago
  A mixed bag to be honest, but some do. Example off the top of my head; a study into mixed-race juries (Sommers 2006) showed that not only did the predictive power of the group increase in the presence of black jurors, but the prodictive power of the white jurors increased without the black juror needing to actually intervene. Their presence caused a behaviour change.
  - teddyh 10y ago
    If that’s the case, we should not aim for equality, but instead aim for at least a token minority member presence in all groups, since this produces the intended effect.
    - richmarr 10y ago
      > ...token minority... While quotas appear to sometimes be necessary to break some environments open, they're polarising & produce resentment. I wouldn't expect that to be a necessary part of a high performance team if you can address the bias that keeps under-represented groups out in the first place. The evidence that hiring processes are both biased and poorly predictive of productivity is pretty strong. I would start by fixing that (and am doing).
belorn 10y ago
Do those studies explain why it relates to productivity? Correlation studies are useful but limited. If the increase in productivity is correlated to employees general acceptance of different views, then yes, diversity of music taste should show a small positive effect but diversity in politics and religion should have a much bigger effect, and I would guess that nudism would have a major effect given peoples strong views on nudity. This could be rather easy tested as causation. If correlation is with genetics, studies on people born of different gender but raise/living as an other should provide proof of that. Same goes to people born of one ethnic group but raise under an other. Fairly easy to test, but I doubt productivity has anything to do with genetics, as genetics generally don't have much causation with cultural phenomena. As with other correlation studies, such studies tend to raise question around the studies themselves. What work are the test subjects doing, and is the result same for all kind? As an example, work demanding multiple spoken languages would benefit of having different people that talk fluently different languages, and people from different places and different cultures often speak different languages fluently. Such aspects need to be considered and removed from studies in order to not create unintended correlations.
- richmarr 10y ago
  > Do those studies explain why it relates to productivity? Correlation studies... Sommers showed causation. The presence of black subjects in the heterogenous group caused the white subjects in that group to behave more conscientiously/objectively, increasing the performance of that group compared to the control. Others like Ellison/Mullin discuss performance in relation to social capital. Homogenous groups tend to find it easier to build more social capital, so feel more comfortable, but more easily succumb to groupthink.
gspetr 10y ago
> Studies show gender & racially diverse teams perform better. If they do then shouldn't we do exactly nothing and let the market sort it out? If the companies with diverse teams are the most efficient then surely they will lead by example.

teddyh 10y ago

Do studies show causation and not simply correlation?

richmarr 10y ago
A mixed bag to be honest, but some do. Example off the top of my head; a study into mixed-race juries (Sommers 2006) showed that not only did the predictive power of the group increase in the presence of black jurors, but the prodictive power of the white jurors increased without the black juror needing to actually intervene. Their presence caused a behaviour change.
- teddyh 10y ago
  If that’s the case, we should not aim for equality, but instead aim for at least a token minority member presence in all groups, since this produces the intended effect.
  - richmarr 10y ago
    > ...token minority... While quotas appear to sometimes be necessary to break some environments open, they're polarising & produce resentment. I wouldn't expect that to be a necessary part of a high performance team if you can address the bias that keeps under-represented groups out in the first place. The evidence that hiring processes are both biased and poorly predictive of productivity is pretty strong. I would start by fixing that (and am doing).

belorn 10y ago

Do those studies explain why it relates to productivity? Correlation studies are useful but limited. If the increase in productivity is correlated to employees general acceptance of different views, then yes, diversity of music taste should show a small positive effect but diversity in politics and religion should have a much bigger effect, and I would guess that nudism would have a major effect given peoples strong views on nudity. This could be rather easy tested as causation. If correlation is with genetics, studies on people born of different gender but raise/living as an other should provide proof of that. Same goes to people born of one ethnic group but raise under an other. Fairly easy to test, but I doubt productivity has anything to do with genetics, as genetics generally don't have much causation with cultural phenomena. As with other correlation studies, such studies tend to raise question around the studies themselves. What work are the test subjects doing, and is the result same for all kind? As an example, work demanding multiple spoken languages would benefit of having different people that talk fluently different languages, and people from different places and different cultures often speak different languages fluently. Such aspects need to be considered and removed from studies in order to not create unintended correlations.

richmarr 10y ago
> Do those studies explain why it relates to productivity? Correlation studies... Sommers showed causation. The presence of black subjects in the heterogenous group caused the white subjects in that group to behave more conscientiously/objectively, increasing the performance of that group compared to the control. Others like Ellison/Mullin discuss performance in relation to social capital. Homogenous groups tend to find it easier to build more social capital, so feel more comfortable, but more easily succumb to groupthink.

gspetr 10y ago

> Studies show gender & racially diverse teams perform better. If they do then shouldn't we do exactly nothing and let the market sort it out? If the companies with diverse teams are the most efficient then surely they will lead by example.