Diverse Backgrounds and Personalites can Strenghten Groups.
A recent research article from Standford Graduate School of Business’s knowledgebase discusses the impact of diversity on work-group performance.
"In a recent article disentangling what researchers have learned over the past 50 years, Margaret A. Neale finds that diversity across dimensions, such as functional expertise, education, or personality, can increase performance by enhancing creativity or group problem-solving. In contrast, more visible diversity, such as race, gender, or age, can have negative effects on a group—at least initially."
Overall, studies reveal that teams with group conflict based on diversity tend to perform better than those with more similarities. What have your experiences with diveristy in your workgroups been like? Have you find this research to be true?
“In fact, the worst kind of group for an organization that wants to be innovative and creative is one in which everyone is alike and gets along too well,” she says. And the key to making nearly any kind of diversity work is managing it well.
Manchester Business School has about 86% of international diversity within a class of less than 100,certainly MBS rocks in group activities… aint it??
