Diversity and Productivity in Production Teams
Diversity and Productivity in Production Teams
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DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.547963
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发表时间：
2004-05
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
B. Hamilton;J. Nickerson;Hideo Owan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
B. Hamilton;J. Nickerson;Hideo Owan
大众媒体经常吹捧劳动力人口结构的多样性是为了增加利润，因为这可能会降低公司与特定客户群体的沟通成本，或者产生更强的团队解决问题的能力。另一方面，多样性也可能增加团队内部的沟通成本，从而阻碍问题的解决并降低生产率。不幸的是，很少有实证研究能够理清上述反补贴效应。如果团队内部存在显著的相互学习和协作，能力多样性会提高团队生产率，而人口多样性可能会降低学习和同行压力的效率，增加团队成员的流动率，从而损害生产率。我们使用一家服装厂的新型面板数据来评估这些主张，该工厂在三年多的时间里从个人计件工资转变为团体计件工资生产。因为我们观察个人生产率数据，所以我们能够在经济计量上区分工人能力多样性和人口多样性的影响。拥有更多不同员工能力的团队在工厂的工作效率更高。在保持团队能力分布不变的情况下，只由一个种族(在我们的案例中是西班牙裔工人)组成的团队效率更高，但这一发现不适用于团队组成的边际变化。我们发现，几乎没有证据表明员工更愿意被隔离；人口统计上不同的团队并不比同质团队更有可能解散，保持团队生产率(因此也就是薪酬)不变。
The popular press often touts workforce demographic diversity as profit enhancing because it may reduce the firm's communication costs with particular segments of customers or yield greater team problem-solving abilities. On the other hand, diversity also may raise communication costs within teams, thereby retarding problem solving and lowering productivity. Unfortunately, there is little empirical research that disentangles the above countervailing effects. Diversity in ability enhances the team productivity if there is significant mutual learning and collaboration within the team, while demographic diversity may harm productivity by making learning and peer pressure less effective and increasing team-member turnover. We evaluate these propositions using a novel panel data from a garment plant that shifted from individual piece rate to group piece rate production over three years. Because we observe individual productivity data, we are able to econometrically distinguish between the impacts of diversity in worker abilities and demographic diversity. Teams with more heterogeneous worker abilities are more productive at the plant. Holding the distribution of team ability constant, teams composed of only one ethnicity (Hispanic workers in our case) are more productive, but this finding does not hold for marginal changes in team composition. We find little evidence that workers prefer to be segregated; demographically diverse teams are no more likely to dissolve, holding team productivity (and hence pay) constant, than homogeneous teams.