Hello All,
While exploring the relationship between the performance and diversity of grassroots conservation organizations, I found a nonlinear relationship between these two variables. The performance was lower in the organizations with the medium level of diversity than in the organizations that have low or high levels of diversity.
I am wresting with what could be the explanation for this relationship. I would greatly appreciate your help in directing me to the relevant resources.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Sincerely,
Nabin
Hello Nabin, Those are interesting results you have. I'm curious what the correlation coefficient is? One reason for your findings could be that less diverse groups have more inter-group trust. I just read an article about some experiments that show people are more likely to trust people who are similar to them (in-groups) than they are to trust people who are different (out-groups). There is a lot of literature out there about this exact phenomena and the grouping of people ranges from race to common-experiences. Here is one source for you to start with: https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/12/3/372/2738791/Trusting-outgroup-but-not-ingroup-members-requires
Thank you Meghan for your response. Now I have something to think about and the direction of exploration to pursue. I am happy to share with you the preliminary results. Would you please inbox me your email address.
In low diversity and high diversity conditions, performance does not suffer as much as in the medium diversity condition, very likely because diversity is not an issue where it is low; where it is very high it does not have a significant mass of homogeneity to contend with or resist. In the medium level, opposing forces of significant magnitude are present to create perceptible turbulence that disrupts performance. What do you say?
https://www.arulmj.net/
Thank you Dr. Arul for your answer. Yes, your point is very helpful in explaining the phenomenon.
Hello Nabin,
How interesting your results are!
Maybe the kind of diversity plays a key role as well:
Specific demographic variables (e.g., functional background, organizational tenure)
Ethnicity (probably your main interest)
Educational diversity -although possibly intertwined; all three can be addressed separately I guess. Differences in cognitive abilities may also be an issue?
Just in case the participants worked in a team context: team performance variables such as trust, team-self-efficacy and/or team mental models can be crucial as well; If you boil it down it translates into three categories of control variables: cognitive, motivational, and emotional variables.
All the best future work and greetings from Germany
Lothar Bildat
Thank you Lothar for your reply. You have given more directions to explore the issue. I think I can synthesize the theories and come up with a convincing explanation.
These are grassroots community-based conservation organizations implementing integrated conservation and sustainable development activities.
Somewhat like the article which Meghan cited my own studies of "jumpers"-managed firms suggest trust levels between incoming managers and locals were the prime explanation of performance. Routledge just published my book on it "Mismanagement, 'Jumpers' and Morality" but I also a few articles attached below:
Thank you Dr. Shapira for sharing the articles. I look forward to reading them.
Dr. Arul, I will definitely send you the paper when it is published. We are submitting it to a journal soon.
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