Diversity For Everyone At Work, Just Not Me

In theory, people value diversity in the workplace, but their actions speak otherwise when they choose to flock with those of the same feather, reports a team of researchers from the universities of Basel and Koblenz-Landau.

Despite “diversity” being a keyword in many company websites today, statistics tell a different story: the typical manager still tends to be white and male. The numbers do not lie, it is clear that there is a dissonance between the desire to bring about diversity and corporate reality.

A team of researchers led by Dr. Mariela Jaffé from the Department of Psychology at the University of Basel studied this discrepancy from a social psychology perspective. They found that people did not choose colleagues for others the same way they chose them for themselves.

A diverse team can be expected to be rich in variations on perspective, new ideas and innovative solutions. On the other hand, one fears that it might be difficult to work with someone who has completely different views, speaks a different language, or has a different style of work.

A lot of this has to do with decision-making. According to current theories, people start to question if diversity is really important in their team when their decision directly affects themselves and thus, fill their team with people similar to themselves. But when deciding teams for other people, these reservations play a lesser role. With the importance of diversity in mind, you will see them filling out a team with as varied a set as you can find. Kind of like in school when your teacher splits your class into groups and you find yourself without your closest friends.

This leads to the conclusion that organizations could become more diverse if hiring and team decisions were not (only) made by those directly affected, but (also) by other people who are not directly involved in the group's daily work later.

"Research shows that people's perception of and the importance they attach to diversity have key implications for people's decision making," explains lead author Dr. Jaffé. "In a next step it would be important to gain a better understanding of the evaluation of diversity to discuss and resolve concerns about potential disadvantages. This way, people may then be more willing to include dissimilar people in their own teams."