Diversity and Team Performance in a Kenyan Organization

Benjamin Marx, Vincent Pons and Tavneet Suri
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Vincent Pons: Harvard Business School - Harvard University
Tavneet Suri: MIT Sloan - Sloan School of Management - MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Abstract: We present the results from a field experiment on team diversity. Individuals working as door-to-door canvassers for a non-profit organization were randomly assigned a teammate, a supervisor, and a list of individuals to canvass. This created random variation within teams in the degree of horizontal diversity (between teammates), vertical diversity (between teammates and their supervisor) and external diversity (between teams and the individuals they canvassed). We observe team-level measures of performance and find that horizontal ethnic diversity decreases performance, while vertical diversity often improves performance, and external diversity has no effect. The data on time use suggests that horizontally homogeneous teams organized tasks in a more efficient way, while vertically homogeneous teams exerted lower effort.

Keywords: Ethnic diversity; Organizational behavior; Labor management; Performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-hrm
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-03873741
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Published in Journal of Public Economics, 2021, 197, pp.104332. ⟨10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104332⟩

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Working Paper: Diversity and Team Performance in a Kenyan Organization (2021)
Working Paper: Diversity and Team Performance in a Kenyan Organization (2021)
Working Paper: Diversity and Team Performance in a Kenyan Organization (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03873741

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104332

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