Empirical study on the influence of demographic and functional diversity in human resources
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51302/rtss.2019.1302Keywords:
diversity, organizational demography, workgroup compositionAbstract
The influence of workgroup diversity has aroused a growing interest in empirical literature on the field of human resources. However, previous research shows inconclusive findings, both positive and negative effects, and even some works do not evidence any impact. Extending previous studies, we analyse the influence of diversity at an organisational level. For that purpose, we first review some of the most accepted rationales regarding to the linkage between diverse composition in organizational groups and performance. We emphasize on some leading and specific approaches such as the organizational demography perspective and the relational demography research, additionally to the viewpoint of the information processing and decision making perspective. Using statistical methods, we present an empirical study in order to test whether both functional and gender diversity of human resources affects performance and financial success objectives. We use a sample of Spanish firms during the 2008-2016 years, which is particularly interesting due to the crisis affecting the business world along such period. The results of our study indicate that diversity has a significant positive influence both on company outcomes and on sales volume.
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