This paper critically reviews Allen, Dawson, Wheatley, and White's (2008) study examining the relationship between perceived diversity and organizational performance across senior management, middle management, and non-managerial levels. The study relied on structured interviews with 391 employees at 130 southeastern U.S. organizations, using qualitative perception-based measures rather than statistical data. The review summarizes the study's three hypotheses, key findings, and acknowledged limitations, then offers a critical assessment of its methodological weaknesses — including a non-representative sample and exclusive reliance on employee perceptions. Competing research is cited to complicate the study's broadly positive conclusions about diversity and performance.
This paper demonstrates effective source critique: the writer accurately summarizes the study's design, hypotheses, and findings before systematically identifying methodological gaps. By contrasting the reviewed study with a range of conflicting research, the reviewer situates the work within a broader scholarly debate rather than treating it in isolation. This technique shows graduate-level engagement with the literature.
The paper opens with the study's purpose and unique claims, then explains its methodology and data collection. The central sections report findings at each managerial level and interpret their implications. The final two sections first recount the authors' own acknowledged limitations, then layer on the reviewer's independent critique, ending with a summary of competing studies that challenge the original conclusions. This two-stage critical structure — the authors' self-critique followed by external critique — is a hallmark of strong academic reviewing.
In their article "Perceived Diversity and Organizational Performance," Allen, Dawson, Wheatley, and White report on their study investigating the relationships between perceived diversity and perceived organizational performance across all levels of workers in organizations of many kinds. They claim that their research is unique in that it takes into account employee perceptions of diversity and performance — qualitative measures as opposed to the statistical data collected by most other studies on the topic. The authors also state that their research stands apart because it focuses on entire organizations instead of sub-units or work teams and because it examines all levels of employee status, from senior management to middle management to non-managerial workers (Allen et al., 2008).
The study aimed at testing three hypotheses. The first was that perceived diversity at the senior management level will be positively related to perceived firm performance. The second asserted that perceived diversity in other managerial positions will be positively related to perceived firm performance. Similarly, the third hypothesis stated that perceived diversity in non-managerial positions will be positively related to perceived firm performance (Allen et al., 2008).
The researchers decided to collect qualitative data in the form of employee perceptions of diversity and organizational performance based on the concept that perception is reality. While statistical analyses of workplace diversity and financial data concerning organizational performance are more concrete, the authors felt that perceived measures of these variables made for a richer, more complex data set. This approach also employs a Rogerian viewpoint that assumes a subject's perceptions of his or her world are valid in and of themselves (Allen et al., 2008).
The researchers collected data through structured interviews with a convenience sample of 391 managers and professional employees at 130 organizations in the southeastern United States. They ensured that they interviewed at least one minority and one non-minority worker at each organization. Each participant was questioned about his or her perception of diversity within the organization at the levels of senior management, junior management, and non-management. Each participant was also asked to rate the performance of his or her organization with regard to quality, productivity, profitability, market share, return on equity, and overall performance. The researchers used the Dess and Robinson scale to ascertain the workers' perceptions of organizational performance (Allen et al., 2008).
The study's results present a mixed picture. Forty-two percent of interview subjects strongly agreed that minorities are proportionately represented at the non-managerial level in their organizations. While not an especially high percentage, the figures concerning the other two levels were even lower: 22% strongly agreed with that statement at the junior management level, and only 10% strongly agreed that minorities were proportionately represented at the senior management level. In fact, more than a quarter of respondents strongly disagreed with the statement as it applied to senior management in their organizations (Allen et al., 2008).
Interestingly, the first hypothesis — concerning senior management diversity — received the strongest support. Across perceived measures of organizational performance, it was positively related to all of them except market share. Market share was, however, the only performance measure positively related to perceived diversity at other levels of management. The third hypothesis showed broad, strong support much like the first hypothesis did (Allen et al., 2008).
The study's findings suggest that perceived diversity at the senior and non-managerial levels of an organization is most important to perceptions of the organization's performance. At the senior management level, diversity might best fulfill its role as a strategic concept. Diversity at the higher levels may positively influence high-level decision-making concerning the organization's overall strategic direction. Such decisions are very visible to everyone in a firm and have obvious impacts on company performance. Moreover, diversity at the senior management level can send a positive message about the possibilities and opportunities for advancement within the firm, and that message can have a boosting effect on employee morale at lower levels in the organizational hierarchy (Allen et al., 2008).
Higher perceived diversity at the non-managerial level was related to higher perceived measures of return on equity, market share, and overall organizational performance. Diversity at this level may help expand market share by making minorities more visible to customers and by enhancing the firm's collective understanding of the market. However, perceived diversity at this level also correlated with communication problems and negatively impacted decision-making time and task completion time. As for the findings regarding the second hypothesis, the authors suggest that diversity at the middle management level might contribute to a perception of tokenism within a company and negatively affect employee morale, identification with the firm, and perceptions of performance (Allen et al., 2008).
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