Is diversity good for business performance? Well, it depends.That's the conclusion reached by the Diversity Research Network, a group of scholars drawn from six universities who recently completed the largest field-based study of this topic to date. “The Effects of Diversity on Business Performance: Report of the Diversity Research Network,” appears in the Spring 2003 issue of Human Resource Management. After examining four Fortune 500 companies in depth, the researchers found that a variety of contextual variables, including an organization's culture, strategy and human resource practices, helps to determine whether diversity boosts performance or drags it down.In the first case study, which involved an information-processing company with more than 26,000 employees, professor Karen Jehn and lecturer Katerina Bezru-kova of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School found that racial diversity was associated with poor performance in business units that shared three traits: a competitive organizational culture, a growth-oriented business strategy and human resource practices that focused on honing job-related skills. However, this relationship disappeared when groups promoted collective achievement, emphasized stability or customer relationships rather than growth, and used training opportunities to impart diversity-related values to employees.S
