I have a son who is proudly multicultural, with a
geographical range that covers three continents and a skill range that goes
from playing violin to programming for parallel processing, with some things in
between. He mainly thinks of that range as useful for him personally, but now
there is research suggesting that organizations should also be interested. The
reason relates to an old dilemma about the costs and benefits of diversity.
A research paper by Matthew Corritore, Amir Goldberg, and Sameer B. Srivastava in Administrative Science Quarterly explains the dilemma
well and gives new evidence. The dilemma is that diversity is both good and
bad. It is good because diversity means there is a wide range of ways of
looking at a problem and thinking of solutions, and combining these can fuel
creative solutions that are better than what any individual skill set would
produce. It is bad because diversity makes communication harder as a result of
fewer shared assumptions and skills, and it generates less agreement on how to
describe solutions. This good-and-bad combination has made it very hard for
managers to best make use of the diversity available.
Corritore, Goldberg, and Srivastava found out that diversity
has very different effects depending on whether it is found between people or
within people. A multicultural organization or team in which each member has
one cultural value each is exactly where the good-and-bad dilemma happens. It cannot
be fully creative, and it will be less efficient than a monocultural
organization or team. In fact, interpersonal diversity in organizations
predicts lower profitability. But if the multicultural organization or team has
members with more than one cultural value each, the result is different. Now
the potential creativity can be fully realized, so firms with such people will make
more innovations and experience greater economic growth.
The findings are neat. They confirm that the dilemma
experienced by managers and measured by researchers is real. Diversity is good
and bad at the same time, and it may be best when it is intrapersonal. This
gives a solution to the managers trying to hire for creativity, because they
can now see that hiring people who are different from one another is too simple
a solution. Intrapersonal flexibility should also become a target of hiring,
such as the diversity that can be gained from varied backgrounds and
experiences.
Of course, the solution has a few problems attached to it.
First, people who are truly multicultural are scarce, so hiring for that
characteristic will be difficult. I can imagine that my son would be pleased
about that problem of becoming a valued scarce resource, but firms looking for
his type will not. Second, it can be difficult to even recognize who is multicultural.
Researchers can do it through analyzing their writing, as in this research
paper, but firms don’t have access to such tools.
Going by simple indicators is not enough, as I know from
living in Singapore. Many foreigners from Australia, Europe, and America are
introduced to Asia through spending time in Singapore, but they can be divided
into those who live the expat life with little local contact and those who
learn the culture more deeply. Multiculturalism is in the mind, and so is the
willingness to obtain it.
