Functional vs. Social Diversity in Organizations Explained

Introduction to Diversity Constructions

Simons and Rowland (2011) seek to explore the difference between functional and social diversity in organizations. They begin with the premise that the existing literature does not adequately distinguish between these two types of diversity. The first issue they raise concerns solidifying a definition for each concept. The basic aim of the study is to examine existing research to identify areas where improvements could be made in the diversity literature in order to enhance its impact on expected organizational outcomes.

The authors begin by breaking down perspectives on diversity into two broad categories: the information and decision-making perspective, and the social organization perspective. The core distinction between these two views is that diversity may refer either to differences in culture and ethnicity, or to in-group differences in how individuals conceptualize problems and approach work.

Information and Decision-Making Perspective

The information and decision-making perspective holds that evidence from a wide range of team types shows that diversity within a team can be just as high among people sharing the same cultural background as it can be among ethnically heterogeneous groups. Organizations can encourage the hiring of people with different working styles as a means of reducing conformity to social norms. Under this view, decision-making is improved when team members bring different approaches to problem-solving, information gathering, and decision heuristics — and such diversity has little to do with ethnic heterogeneity.

This perspective is somewhat more sophisticated because the diversity it describes is not immediately visible to an outsider, yet it can be readily recognized by human resources departments and managers who understand their personnel. These groups recognize that there are different ways of doing things, and that visible characteristics are not necessarily the best — or at least not the only — way to identify meaningful differences. This perspective does not assume that people of different social backgrounds are necessarily different from one another, nor does it assume that a visibly homogenous group is necessarily uniform in how its members work. Most modern organizations recognize that the truth lies somewhere in the middle, particularly in large, diverse cities where ethnic or religious background is no reliable indicator of an individual's birthplace or adherence to local cultural norms.

Social Organization Perspective and the Flexibility Argument

The social organization perspective views diversity through the lens of social groups — ethnic, religious, and other more visible differences. This contrasts with the information and decision-making view because it focuses more strictly on visible distinctions between group members. The underlying assumption of this perspective is that people of different cultures will inherently bring different approaches and viewpoints. In essence, race, religion, and gender are used as proxies for different types of perspectives.

The social organization perspective undoubtedly gained momentum as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which specifically barred discrimination on the basis of social characteristics, effectively compelling organizations to become less visually homogenous. The academic literature then largely backfilled the argument that adding visible diversity would result in different viewpoints and improved decision-making.

A third view discussed by the authors is the flexibility argument, which holds that multicultural management practices would produce changes making organizational systems less deterministic, less standardized, and therefore more fluid. Taken together, these three perspectives — information and decision-making, social organization, and flexibility — represent distinct frameworks from which human resources professionals can draw when designing diversity initiatives.

Conclusion

The authors also recognize that there is room for both perspectives to be correct — that there are definitely instances where social organization diversity can lead to diversity of information processing and decision-making, but that this is not the only way that diversity can be achieved. They note the merit of cross-functional teams as a vehicle for creating diversity of information processing and decision-making independent of social or ethnic composition. The authors conclude by observing that different conceptualizations of diversity often lead to confusion within organizations about what diversity is and why it is valuable, and that mixed implementation can frequently produce uncertainty about the results of diversity initiatives.

References

Simons, S. & Rowland, K. (2011). Diversity and its impact on organizational performance: The influence of diversity constructions on expectations and outcomes. Journal of Technology Management and Innovation, 6(3), 171–182.