-
How Diversity Makes Us Smarter
The first thing to acknowledge about
diversity is that it can be difficult. In the
U.S., where the
dialogue of inclusion
is relatively advanced, even the mention of the
word “diversity” can lead to
anxiety
and conflict. Supreme Court justices disagree on
the virtues of diversity and the means for
achieving it. Corporations spend
billions of dollars to attract and manage
diversity both internally
and
externally, yet they still face discrimination
lawsuits, and the leadership ranks of the business
world remain predominantly white and
male.
首先，
我们要承认，
多元化 这个问题很深奥。
在美国，这个对各种观点包容性相对较高
的国家，提到
“
多元化
”
，人们也会感到焦虑不安，矛盾重重。 最高法院的法官们在多样性的
优点和实现多样性的方法上存在分歧。
他们 努力去实现审判的多元化；
企业为能在内外部形
成并实现多元化散尽千金
，尽管如此，它们仍就面临着歧视诉讼；
商界的领导阶层，仍由白
人和男
性主导。
It
is
reasonable
to
ask
what
good
diversity
does
us. Diversity
of
expertise
confers benefits
that
are
obvious—you
would
not
think
of
building
a
new
car
without
engineers,
designers
and
quality
-
control experts—but what about social diversity? What good comes from diversity of race,
ethnicity, gender and sexual
orientation? Research has shown that social
diversity in a group can
cause
discomfort,
rougher
interactions,
a
lack
of
trust,
greater
perceived
interpersonal
conflict,
lower communication,
less cohesion, more concern about disrespect, and
other problems. So what
is the
upside?
我们有理由提出这样的疑问，
多元化对 我们有什么益处。
专业技术多元化的益处显而易
见
——< /p>
想要研发一款新型汽车，
工程师，
设计师和质量控制专家缺一不可< /p>
——
那么社会多元
化的益处是什么呢？种族，
名族，
性别和性取向方面的多元化，
又会为我么带来怎样的益处
呢？研究表明，
团体中的社会差异会引起一系列问题，
如：
内心不安，
交往困难，
信任缺失，
感知性人际冲突增强
，交流减少，凝聚力降低，对不敬的敏感度增强等。那么，其优点又体
现在何处呢？
The face is that if you want to
build teams or organizations capable of
innovating, you need
ity
enhances
creativity.
It
encourages
the
search
for
novel
information
and
perspectives,
leading
to
better
decision
making
and
problem
ity
can
improve
the
bottom line of companies and lead to
unfettered discoveries and breakthrough
simply being exposed to diversity can
change the way you think. This is not just wishful
thinking:
it is the conclusion I draw
from decades of research from organizational
scientists, psychologists,
sociologists, economists and
demographers
事实是，
如果你想建立一个 有创新能力的团队或组织，
你需要多样化多样性提高创造力。
它鼓励人们
寻找新的信息和视角，
从而促使人们做出更好的决策和解决问题。
多样化可以改< /p>
善公司的下线，
带来不受约束的发现和突破性创新。
即使只 是简单地接触多样性也会改变你
的思维方式。这不仅仅是一厢情愿的想法
:
这是我从组织科学家、心理学家、社会学家、经
济学家和人口学家数十
年的研究中得出的结论
Information and
innovation
信息和创新
The key
to understanding the positive influence of
diversity is the concept of informational
people
are
brought
together
to
solve
problems
in
group,
they
bring
different
information, opinions
and makes obvious sense when we talk about
diversity of
disciplinary
backgrounds
--
think again of the interdisciplinary team building a same logic
applies to social diversity. People who
are different from one another in race, gender and
other
dimensions
bring
unique
information
and
experiences
to
bear
on
the
task
at
hand.A
male
and
female
engineer
might
have
perspectives
as
different
from
one
another
as
an
engineer
and
a
physicist
--
and that is a good thing.
理解多样性的积极影响的关键是信息多样性的
概念。
当人们聚在一起解决问题时，
他们
会带来不同的信
息、
观点和观点当我们谈到学科背景的多样性时，
这是很有道理的
——
再想
想制造汽车的跨学科团队。
同样的逻辑也适用于 社会多样性。
不同种族、
性别和其他维度的
人会带来独特
的信息和经验来承担手头的任务。
男性和女性工程师的观点可能与工程师和物
理学家的观点完全不同
——
这是件好事。
Research
on
large
innovative
organizations
has
shown
repeatedly
that
this
is
the
case.
For
example,
business
professors
Cristian
Desz?
of
the
University
of
Maryland
and
David
Ross
of
Columbia
University studied the effect of gender diversity
on the top firms in Standard & Poor's
Composite
1500
list,
a
group
designed
to
reflect
the
overall
U.S.
equity
market.
First,
they
examined
the
size
and
gender
composition
of
firms'
top
management
teams
from
1992
through
2006. Then they looked at the financial
performance of the firms. In their words, they
found that,
on average, “female
representation in top management leads to an
increase of $$42 million in firm
value.”
They
also
measured
the
firms'
“innovation
intensity”
through
the
ratio
of
research
and
development
expenses
to
assets.
They
found
that
companies
that
prioritized
innovation
saw
greater
financial gains when women were part of the top
leadership ranks.
对大型创新机构的研究，
再次表明情况的确如此。
举这样一个例子，
马里兰大学的克里
< p>斯蒂安
·
德热与哥伦比亚大学的大卫
·
罗丝两位商业教授研究了在标准
&
普尔（一家为反映全
美股票市场情况的公司）
指数综合排名前
1500
名中的顶级公司 中，
性别差异的影响。
首先，
他们查看了从
1992
年至
2006
年公司顶尖管理团队的规模及性别组成。
之后，
他们又查看了
公司的财政状况。他们发现，一般情
况下，用他们自己的话来说
“
公司高管团队中有女性代
表
，
会令公司的价值提升
4200
万美元。
”
同样，
他们还通过研发费用与资产的比率来衡量公
司的
“
创新强度
”
。
，发现看重创新且顶尖领导 团队中有女性的公司，财务收益更多。
Racial
diversity
can
deliver
the
same
kinds
of
benefits.
In
a
study
conducted
in
2003,
Orlando
Richard,
a
professor
of
management
at
the
University
of
Texas
at
Dallas,
and
his
colleagues
surveyed
executives
at
177
national
banks
in
the
U.S.,
then
put
together
a
database
comparing
financial
performance,
racial
diversity
and
the
emphasis
the
bank
presidents
put
on
innovation.
For
innovation
-
focused
banks,
increases
in
racial
diversity
were
clearly
related
to
enhanced financial performance.
种族多元化有着类似的益处。在一项
2003
年实施的研 究中，达拉斯德克萨斯大学管理
学教授奥兰多
·
理查德及 其同事调查了美国
177
家国家银行的高管，并汇总出一个数据库。
这个数据库对比了银行的财政业绩，
种族多元化及行长对创新的关注程度。
< p>在那些注重创新
的银行中，财政业绩的增长明显与种族多元化的增加息息相关。
Evidence for the benefits of
diversity can be found well beyond the U.S. In
August 2012 a
team of researchers at
the Credit Suisse Research Institute issued a
report in which they examined
2,360
companies globally from 2005 to 2011, looking for
a relationship between gender diversity
on corporate management boards and
financial performance. Sure enough, the
researchers found
that companies with
one or more women on the board delivered higher
average returns on equity,
lower
gearing (that is, net debt to equity) and better
average growth.
美国之外，多元化的益处同样随处可
见。
2012
年
8
月，来自瑞士信贷研究所的一组 研
究人员发布了一项报告，
报告中从
2005
< p>年至2011
年，
他们对全球
2360
家公司进行了研究，
探究公司管理董事会中性别多元化与公司财政表现的关系。
果然，
研究人员发现，
那些董事
会中有一
名甚至多名女性的公司，
能实现更高的平均股本回报，
举债经营的风险更低
（既债
务股本比）
，平均增长表现更好。
How Diversity Provokes Thought
Large data
-
set studies have an obvious limitation: they only show that diversity is correlated
with
better
performance,
not
that
it
causes
better
performance.
Research
on
racial
diversity
in
small groups, however, makes it
possible to draw some causal conclusions. Again,
the findings are
clear: for groups that
value innovation and new ideas, diversity
helps.
多元化怎样开拓思维
< br>大量基于数据组的研究，
存在一个明显的局限：
它们仅仅表明多元化与一些 更佳的表现
有关，
并不能说明它是造成更佳表现的原因。
以小组为单位的种族多元化研究则可以令我们
得出一些因果关系的结论。同样，探究结果
很明确：
那些重视创新和新理念的小组，
多元化
在其中起
了作用。
In
2006
Margaret
Neale
of
Stanford
University,
Gregory
Northcraft
of
the
University
of
Illinois
at
Urbana
-
Champaign
and
I
set
out
to
examine
the
impact
of
racial
diversity
on
small
decision
-
making
groups
in
an
experiment
where
sharing
information
was
a
requirement
for
success.
Our
subjects
were
undergraduate
students
taking
business
courses
at
the
University
of
Illinois. We put together
three
-
person groups—some consisting of all white members, others with
two
whites
and
one
nonwhite
member—and
had
them
perform
a
murder
mystery
exercise.
We
made
sure
that
all
group
members
shared
a
common
set
of
information,
but
we
also
gave
each
member
important
clues
that
only
he
or
she
knew.
To
find
out
who
committed
the
murder,
the
group
members
would
have
to
share
all
the
information
they
collectively
possessed
during
discussion. The groups with racial
diversity significantly outperformed the groups
with no racial
diversity. Being with
similar others leads us to think we all hold the
same information and share
the
same
perspective.
This
perspective,
which
stopped
the
all
-
white
groups
from
effectively
processing the information, is what
hinders creativity and innovation.
< br>2006
年，我和斯坦福大学的玛格丽特
·
尼尔，伊利诺伊 大学厄巴纳香槟分校的格雷戈
里
·
诺斯克拉夫特共同设立 了一项研究，旨在探索实验中，种族多元化对小型决策群体有何
影响。
对 于这项实验，
信息共享的成败决定了实验的成败。
我们的实验主体是伊利诺伊大学
进行商务课程学习的本科生。我们让他们三人一组
（一些小组，组内成员 都是白种人；
另一
些小组，
成员为两个白种人和一个非白 人种族）
进行探索谋杀之谜的练习。
我们确保所有组
员共
享同样一组信息，
又单独给每个小组成员提供了一些仅他们自己知道的重要线索。
为了
找到凶手，
小组成员们必须在讨论中共享他们获取的信息。
存在种族多元化的小组明显要比
全白人小组表现地更好。
由于彼此 相似，
我们潜意识里会认为所掌握的信息相同，
所持观点
也相同。
正是这样的观念，
使得全白人小组无法高效地对信息进行处理，
从而阻碍了创造力
和新想法的发展。
Other
researchers
have
found
similar
results.
In
2004
Anthony
Antonio,
a
professor
at
the
Stanford Graduate
School of Education, collaborated with five
colleagues from the University of
California,
Los
Angeles,
and
other
institutions
to
examine
the
influence
of
racial
and
opinion
composition
in
small
group
discussions.
More
than
350
students
from
three
universities
participated in the study. Group
members were asked to discuss a prevailing social
issue (either
child
labor
practices
or
the
death
penalty)
for
15
minutes.
The
researchers
wrote
dissenting
opinions
and
had
both
black
and
white
members
deliver
them
to
their
groups.
When
a
black
person presented a dissenting
perspective to a group of whites, the perspective
was perceived as
more novel and led to
broader thinking and consideration of alternatives
than when a white person