”Vetenskapliga studier” länkar etnisk mångfald till affärsmöjligheter
januari 18, 2007A growing body of research suggests that diversity in the workplace not only helps companies stay in tune with their customers, but also adds to the diversity of ideas and attitudes. Columnist Shankar Vedantam addresses the issue in The Washington Post this week.
Herring has just completed his study. He found that companies that are more diverse have more customers, a larger share of their markets and greater profitability. In fact, when Herring puts his numbers on a graph, he finds a linear relationship between diversity and business success, meaning that as diversity increases, those business indicators increase in step.
”Those companies that have very low levels of racial and ethnic minorities have the lowest profits and the lowest market share and the lowest number of customers,” he said. ”Those that have medium levels do better, and those that have the highest levels do the best.”
Herring got his results by obtaining data about diversity levels and business performance from about 250 companies. He verified the information with independent statistics from Dun & Bradstreet Corp. and documents filed with the federal government. The 250 companies are representative of all U.S. businesses with more than 10 employees — from the restaurant down the street that employs a dozen people to multinational corporations with thousands of workers. Herring found the same relationship between diversity and business success whether a company was large or small.
While Herring’s study points to the benefits of diversity, it does not directly address the contentious question of how it should be achieved.
As a good scientist, he is cautious about the result and says it does not prove that companies do better because they are diverse. What the study shows is a correlation between diversity and business success. While diversity could be the cause of better business outcomes, it is also possible, for example, that companies that are successful to begin with do a better job of attracting and retaining minorities.
[Ännu ett "argument" för mångkultur som visar sig innehålla logiska brister: stora och framgångsrika företag har givetvis större krav på sig att inkludera etnisk mångfald på sin arbetsplats. Därmed finns det ingen kausal relation mellan de båda fenomenen, fastän massmedia givetvis hoppar på ruljansen för att förstärka mångkulturens framfart i Europa.]
