Learning from diversity

Recent theory suggests that when culturally diverse groups treat their diversity as a resource for learning how best to do the groups core work, work processes designed to facilitate constructive intergroup conflict and exploration of diverse views not only mitigate process losses associated with diversity but also foster performance gains. The theory remains untested, however, and does not address how a teams learning versus nonlearning perspective on racial diversity, as one dimension of cultural diversity, might influence performance in teams whose work content is substantively unrelated to racial issues or concerns. Using quantitative methods, we analyzed two years of demographic, survey, and performance data from over 450 retail bank branches, in which tasks are substantively unrelated to race. Results supported the hypothesis that racially diverse teams with a learning perspective on their diversity outperform racially diverse teams with a nonlearning perspective. Using qualitative methods, we show how employees in racially diverse branches with a learning perspective drew on their racial diversity as a valuable resource in and of itself, despite the apparent race-neutrality of their tasks, which may then have served as a catalyst to team learning more generally. Employees in branches with a nonlearning perspective on diversity advocated a race-blind ideology, which precluded learning from racial differences and the potential benefits of such learning for team learning more generally.