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I've been hearing that groups and organisations perform better when their workforce is diverse (for example in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, introvert/extrovert, age, etc...). Are these claims true? How robust is the science backing them?

Here are some articles that make the claim:

While, my personal experience is in agreement with these claims, I'm skeptical of them because they seem to pick one or two measures of success among many where the diverse teams do better.

grayob
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    It seems very plausible that a diverse team can more easily attract talent. A team that is 100% 50-year-old men may be unattractive for a brilliant 25-year-old woman. I don't really see why one would doubt that. – gerrit Jun 03 '16 at 09:53
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    Could you define diversity more specifically here? For example, diversity of knowledge or skills has obvious benefits to team performance, making the question a trivial one, but it's not clear whether that is in scope for your question. Two of your three links include such kinds of diversity. I think a more focused question like "Do gender and racial diversity lead to better performance" would be better. –  Jun 03 '16 at 12:43
  • What metric of better performance do you have in mind? There are studies proving that [groupthink](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink) can be damaging, and uniformity of a group might be a cause of groupthink. – vartec Jun 04 '16 at 00:04
  • Also, IMO it's not about some measurable productivity improvements, but more like avoiding failures, like "U2 on iPhone", decided by group of elderly white men. – vartec Jun 04 '16 at 00:06
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    What type of group? What type of organization? What types of diversity? An NBA basketball team that hires pygmies for the sake of diversity is probably making a mistake. An agency tasked with gathering foreign intelligence had better have a lot of intellectual, linguistic, and even racial diversity. – Readin Jun 04 '16 at 06:09
  • After reviewing the provided links, we need to fix this. The question is far too generic. All the links distinguish different kinds of diversity (racial, ethnic, sexual orientation but also expertise) and make different claims. Some links claim correlation but not causation, other claim causation but in both directions... Also, all the claims are about "corporations" and mostly about the UK/US. Maybe we should limit your post to that. Your question though is only tagged "gender". – Sklivvz Jun 04 '16 at 09:12
  • That's a very good point, @gerrit. I can definitely picture diversity helping ensure that quality talent doesn't preemptively decide they'd be unwelcome. Much easier for someone to join a company where they seem like they'd fit in than one where they'd seem like a minority. Although that's not directly what OP asked for. More like an indirect effect, I would describe it. However, I've failed to find any studies on this, so there's naught but anecdotes... – Kat Jun 08 '16 at 16:30
  • Thanks everyone. I'll try and post a more specific question (I should have enough reputation to create tags for it now as well). The claims are certainly plausible, but it's hard to tell what is backed by evidence and what isn't. @Sklivvz did a good job of summarizing my own confusion with the claims. – grayob Jun 09 '16 at 16:58

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