Perceived Diversity and Organizational Performance," Research Paper

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Diversity at this level may help expand market share by making minorities more visible to customers and by enhancing the firm's collective understanding of the market. Perceived diversity at this level correlated to communication problems and negative impacted decision-making time and task completion time. As for the findings regarding the second hypothesis, the authors suggest that diversity at the middle management level might contribute to the perception of tokenism a company and negatively affect employee morale, identification with the firm, and perceptions of performance (Allen et al., 2008).

The authors acknowledge the limitations of their study. Qualitative research cannot show causality. Convenience sampling is not as robust as random sampling. Moreover, the sample was overwhelming composed of Caucasians and management level employees. Geographical and cultural limitations reduce the generalizability of the study's findings. Since they interviewed only 3 workers per firm on average, they did not plumb very deeply into any of the organizations studied. The authors did not operationally define the term "minority" and thus can't really say what the term means in relation to the research findings. Also they acknowledge that the in-person interview may have affected subjects' responses given the sensitivity of the issue of diversity in the workplace (Allen et al., 2008).

This reviewer finds this study seriously flawed. First, a study of diversity should not have a sample that is 77% Caucasian and 61% male. While that first figure might be near the actual percentage of whites in the U.S. population as a whole, effort should be made to include more racial minorities in research of this nature.

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This seems more like a lazy sample than a convenience sample. Second, the total reliance on employees' perceptions is problematic. Given that financial data is available for publicly held companies and for many non-profit organizations, the researchers possibly could have made a stronger case for their research if they could have shown some congruity between employees' perceptions of the firm's performance and the actual numbers.

While some research supports the findings of this study (Von Bergen, Soper, & Parnell, 2005), other studies challenge these results outright (Carson, Mosley, & Boyar, 2004; Hartmut, 2010; Wang & Clift, 2009). Some investigations revealed issues that mitigate against successful diversification such as self-protective human resources policies and practices (Bierema, 2010); a priori beliefs about corporate culture, racial and gender stereotypes and discrimination, and a lack of sensitivity training (Smith & Joseph, 2010); and generally more positive perceptions of job performance among those who share racial similarities (Martin, 2005). Driver's research found that few organizations cultivate the kind of diversity that positively transforms workplace practices and performance (2003), and Jehn and Chatman showed that conflicts oriented around differing perceptions among employees led to negative workplace outcomes (2000). These studies suggest that the relationship between diversity and performance, perceived or calculated, is far from the slam dunk that Allen, Dawson, Wheatley, and White's study might lead one to conclude......

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