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This paper aims to examine the impact of caste and religious diversity on human capital outcome and external effect of ethnic capital on human capital accumulation process based on social fragmentation of West Bengal state which is mainly shaped under caste and religious lines.

A field survey was undertaken in which 440 respondents belonging to 440 households were interviewed in four municipalities of West Bengal – one each for most homogeneous and most heterogeneous along caste dimension and the equal number along religious line. For a cross sectional study during a one‐year period between January‐December 2006, this study considers stratified random sampling method (a mixture of both purposive and random sampling). In addition to construction of caste and a religion based fractionalization indexes, this study considers regression analyses of ordinary least square method in order to explore the stated objectives.

It suggests that more heterogeneous localities have lower outcome of per capita education after controlling the effect of per capita income. Moreover, the external effect of ethnic capital in heterogeneous localities has also lower outcome of human capital accumulation process.

The lower human capital accumulation in the heterogeneous localities along caste and religious dimensions might play an adverse effect on economic growth, crime, markets, technological breakthroughs and the arts and science. So, institutional measures by government and non‐government sources are needed to improve the stock of human capital, particularly in the heterogeneous localities influencing the positive impact on higher socio‐economic outcome in those localities.

In today's global economy, a country's level of competitiveness has emerged as an important policy tool for business leaders and the impact of many economic and institutional “hard” factors on competitiveness have been studied. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact that diversity, a “soft” factor, has on a country's level of competitiveness.

Using a sample of 102 countries, a multiple regression analysis is performed in which the relationship between a country's competitiveness, as proxied by the global competitiveness index, and diversity, as proxied by ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity, are tested while controlling for other factors known to affect competitiveness. Further, a cluster analysis is performed in an effort to illuminate global patterns in competitiveness.

The results indicate that greater levels of ethnic diversity negatively and significantly affect a country's competitiveness, but greater levels of linguistic diversity positively and significantly affect competitiveness while religious diversity has no effect.

The reasons behind for the analysis results still need further research. For example, why do greater levels of linguistic diversity positively affect country competitiveness?

The IMF, World Bank, and other investors of capital need to understand whether diversity will help or hinder aid and loan programs and corporations need to consider diversity when conducting global business and foreign investment.

This study is the first to examine the relationship between diversity and country‐level competitiveness and has value to global business managers and investors.

Using a sample of 86 countries over the 1960–1999 period, this paper investigates the differential growth effects of ethnic division across cultural regions. While the evidence supports a negative relationship between ethnic fragmentation and economic growth, this relationship is significant only for Africa and Latin America. This study also uses a religious measure of ethnic fragmentation, and finds that religious diversity has a positive impact on growth. This impact, however, is present only in the Middle East and East Asia. Some possible reasons behind the heterogeneous effects of ethnic diversity are also explored.

We can divide the humanity into 5,000 ethnic groups who reside in 160 distinct states in the world. On an average this implies that only one randomly picked state out of every 10 states is ethnically homogenous. In other words the borders between different ethnic groups do not accord with national borders. We, hence, live in a melting pot of ethnicity and most countries are ethnically heterogeneous. In an alternative fashion, we can make a statement about our ethnic diversity by making a simple observation that there are over 600 living language groups in 184 states in the world. There is thus a reason to believe that the human race confronts a serious and endemic ethnic diversity, which is also increasingly accompanied with unprecedented ethnic rivalry, competition, conflicts, violent clashes and all-out wars. Our chapter provides a comprehensive investigation into the economic causes and consequences of ethnic heterogeneity in our modern world. In order to understand the basic economics of ethnic diversity, we will focus our attention to what is commonly known as ‘global firms’ who employ people from diverse ethnic backgrounds. The consequences will be examined in the context of modern societies where the global firms play an important economic role.

To formalize and test the hypotheses that economic and political inequality tend to lower the quality of public education and thereby the overall quality of education in developing countries.

The paper uses both international cross‐section data and panel data from almost 100 countries to test these hypothesized effects of the two types of inequality on educational quality. Three different indicators of school quality, all at the primary level, are used. The paper tests the robustness of the findings to different estimation methods, specifications and the use of instruments for a potentially endogenous variable.

There is clear empirical support for the hypothesized negative effects of political inequality and ethnic fragmentation on educational quality. The evidence for the hypothesized effect of income inequality, however, is very weak at best.

The educational quality measures are crude and the analysis is at the country level. Future work can use more direct, achievement‐based measures of quality and data at the district or county levels.

Redistribution of income and democratization can have beneficial effects on educational quality.

The paper provides a theoretical model that formalizes the hypothesis that economic and political inequality can lower the quality of public education and thereby the overall quality of education. It empirically tests this model using panel and cross‐sectional data.

Pervasive forms of worldwide communication now connect us instantly and constantly, and yet we all too often fail to understand each other. Rather than benefiting from our globally interconnected reality, the world continues to fall back on divisiveness, a widening schism exacerbated by some of the most pronounced divisions in history along lines of wealth, culture, religion, ideology, class, gender, and race. Cross-cultural dynamics are rife within multinational organizations and among people who regularly work with people from other cultures. This chapter reviews what we know from our scholarship on cross-cultural interaction among expatriates, negotiators, and teams that work in international contexts. Perhaps more important, this chapter outlines what we need to learn – and to unlearn – to be able to see diversity as an asset in helping individuals, organizations, and society to succeed rather than continuing to understand it primarily as a source of problems.

The purpose of this two-part paper is to explore the relationship between multiculturalism and performance, and attempt to reconcile some of the varying points of views, in order to suggest practical implications for managers in the workplace.

A review of the literature regarding both diversity and performance was performed. Next, the focus was on the relationship specifically between racial-ethnic diversity and performance. To show the relevance of the paper, materials dedicated to Canadian population and immigration was included.

It is still somewhat inconclusive whether diversity can have a definite positive or negative impact on organizational performance. The literature reviewed shows that authors have differing opinions. One element appears to be clear: diversity of itself does not necessarily bring benefit. For a diverse group to perform well, it must be well managed. Diversity remains an underused tool that managers have yet to learn to utilize.

At the time of writing, there was not a significant amount of published material on the direct relationship between multiculturalism and performance. This paper attempts to gather and make sense of the various views formalized thus far and puts forth a new question of how to turn multiculturalism in the workplace into an asset for organizations.

Managers still do not agree on how to take full advantage of diversity. As the Canadian workforce becomes more and more diverse, so increases the importance of addressing and answering this question in practical terms. Especially facing the increased globalization of corporations, taking advantage of the untapped potential that resides in a culturally diverse work team should be at the top of every international company’s goals.

The importance of studying the relationship between multiculturalism and performance is crucial because in developed countries like Canada organizations are becoming increasingly culturally diverse. Much has been written about the effect of group diversity on conflict and creativity, on the performance of heterogeneous groups vs homogeneous groups, on organizational commitment among ethnic minorities, and on self-fulfilling performance expectations.

This paper is a useful source for managers interested in understanding the real value of diversity in the workplace, as well as for researchers studying the relationship between corporate diversity and corporate performance.