Diversity and Team Performance in a Kenyan Organization / Benjamin Marx, Vincent Pons, Tavneet Suri.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marx, Benjamin.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Pons, Vincent.

Suri, Tavneet.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w28655.

NBER working paper series no. w28655

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2021.

Summary:

We present the results from a field experiment on team diversity. Individuals working as door-to-door canvassers for a non-profit organization were randomly assigned a teammate, a supervisor, and a list of individuals to canvass. This created random variation within teams in the degree of horizontal diversity (between teammates), vertical diversity (between teammates and their supervisor) and external diversity (between teams and the individuals they canvassed). We observe team-level measures of performance and find that horizontal ethnic diversity decreases performance, while vertical diversity often improves performance, and external diversity has no effect. The data on time use suggests that horizontally homogeneous teams organized tasks in a more efficient way, while vertically homogeneous teams exerted lower effort.

Notes:

Print version record

April 2021.