Cultural diversity a plus for companies

Citation

(1999), "Cultural diversity a plus for companies", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 31 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.1999.03731gab.003

Cultural diversity a plus for companies

Cultural diversity a plus for companies

Keywords: Cultural synergy, Performance teams

Top British companies are increasingly seeing staff with culturally diverse backgrounds as a potential asset in performance teams. A new nation-wide survey from Oxford University Department of Experimental Psychology reveals that one-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 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 Economic and Social Research Council (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 Chiltern, paternity leave and career breaks. They put a high priority on managing diversity along with other business objectives like Investors in People, business excellence and total quality management. And these companies are more involved in campaigns that advance the cause of minorities.

Reasons advanced by companies which do not have a specific policy included: financial (not enough resources); managers not recognizing the importance of diversity as a business issue; some companies seeing no need to concentrate on being a "fair and equitable employer", or, in one company, specifically avoiding following "the latest fad".

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