Negative Effects Of Diversity Research Articles

Board diversity in family firms across cultures: A contingency analysis on the effects of gender and tenure diversity on firm performance

The initial work on family firm diversity research argued that family influence negatively moderates the board diversity–financial firm performance relationship, whereas more recent empirical evidence has suggested the opposite. Drawing on upper echelons theory, we investigate national culture (i.e., the degree of masculinity in the country of the firm) as a contingency factor influencing how tenure and gender board diversity translate into superior or inferior financial performance in family and non-family firms. Our analyses of 4192 firm-year observations of publicly listed European firms support most of our hypotheses. Our results show that the positive direct financial performance effects of tenure diversity are weakened in family firms, suggesting that the larger differences in values, goals, experiences, and power among family and non-family board members may suppress the benefits of cognitive variety. Furthermore, our results support that the degree of masculinity is an important factor moderating the diversity-family firm-financial firm performance relationship for gender and tenure diversity. We thereby advance diversity research in family firms to explain under what conditions positive or negative diversity effects prevail by introducing national culture as a novel contingency factor that may help to reconcile prior conflicting findings.

Contrasting effects of species richness on soil pollutant removal in herbaceous plant communities: the importance of individual species

Many studies have shown that increasing species diversity generally increases ecosystem functioning, but few have evaluated the role of species diversity in soil pollutant removal, especially for organic pollutants. We test the hypothesis that increasing plant diversity can enhance soil pollutant removal. To test the hypothesis, we conducted two experiments: one for removal of cadmium and the other for removal of cypermethrin from the soil. In both experiments, plants were grown in monocultures, four‐ and eight‐species mixtures in soils contaminated with the pollutants. Contaminated soils without plants were also included as controls. Our results showed that the efficiency of cadmium removal from the soil decreased with increasing plant species richness. The negative effect of diversity on cadmium removal was largely attributed to species underyielding in plant mixtures. In contrast, the efficiency of cypermethrin removal from soils increased with increasing plant species richness. The positive effect of diversity on cypermethrin removal was likely due to the presence of Taraxacum mongolicum which had the lowest biomass but the highest removal efficiency. Our results suggest that species diversity may regulate pollutant remediation, and this is pollutant‐dependent. Moreover, the performance of individual species can strongly influence the direction and magnitude of the diversity effect on soil pollutant removal. These species should be treated with cautious in the remediation of contaminated soils.

How does diversity affect public organizational performance? A meta‐analysis

AbstractResearch in public administration examining the effects of diversity on public organizational performance has produced mixed results. However, the lack of a comprehensive theoretical framework has failed to provide an explanation for the mixed diversity effects. This study introduces a systematic analytical model, Categorization‐Elaboration Model (CEM), to help identify the contextual constructs which can promote the positive effects of diversity on public organizational performance. A meta‐analysis is conducted on 37 quantitative studies to test the empirical validity of a CEM constructed theoretical model with 253 effect sizes which will promote a better understanding of the circumstances or contexts that lead to the benefits of diversity within public sector organizations. The empirical results of meta‐regression point to the appropriate range of contextual factors which can alleviate the potential negative effects of diversity and promote its overall positive effects.

Managing diversity: an assessment of the national question in Pakistan

ABSTRACT Modern societies are confronted with a plethora of issues that have far-reaching socio-political ramifications. The negative effects of diversity are primarily the result of state policies. Where societies were not homogenous, attempts were made to bring desperate populations together to advance official nationalist projects. Pakistan, being dominantly a Muslim state, has religio-cultural and ethnic diversity where minority groups have raised their voices against the unjust state’s policies. This study examines how these issues evolved over the course of Pakistan’s history. The paper attempts to answer the question ‘why has Pakistan’s plurality become unmanageable?’ The results demonstrate that a high degree of centralization of authority, the adoption of Urdu as a national language, a sense of domination of the central institutions by the Punjabis, underrepresentation of ethnic minorities in state institutions, and controlled society has aggravated the position of diverse groups in Pakistan, with colossal consequences to national economy and social harmony.

Immigration, integration and cooperation: experimental evidence from a public goods game in Italy

ABSTRACT Immigration has rapidly changed the demographic profile of most Western European societies, increasing their ethnic diversity. Some cross-disciplinary literature comparing homogeneous and diverse communities provides observational evidence of a link between high levels of ethnoracial diversity and lower levels of public goods provision. While these results are often interpreted as driven by context/interaction effects, whereby individuals lower their cooperativeness in response to the presence of non-coethnics, they could also be explained by composition effects – immigrants having different baseline levels of cooperativeness, and thereby lowering average cooperation rates. To disentangle these effects, we conducted a lab-in-the-field experiment with a sample of Italians and immigrants from Morocco and the Philippines residing in Milan. In our public goods experiment, participants were randomly assigned to either homogeneous or ethnically mixed groups. We find that Italians behave similarly in both homogeneous and heterogeneous groups, thus contradicting arguments about the negative effects of diversity on the native population, while there are both compositional and interactional effects when considering the behaviour of Moroccan and Filipino immigrants, respectively. Moreover, differences largely disappear when we consider only the behaviour of more socio-economically integrated immigrants, highlighting the need for a more processual understanding of cooperation in multiethnic communities.

Loss of Key Riparian Plant Species Impacts Stream Ecosystem Functioning

Leaf litter of alder (Alnus glutinosa) is a key resource to detrital stream food webs. Due to its high quality and palatability, it is readily colonised by microorganisms and consumed by detritivores, contributing significantly to carbon and nutrient cycling and to ecosystem functioning. Given that this species has declined due to the spread of the pathogen Phytophthora alni, we investigated how its loss would alter leaf litter decomposition and associated stream assemblages of aquatic hyphomycetes and invertebrates, in a field experiment conducted in three streams. We compared litter mixtures containing alder plus three other species (Corylus avellana, Quercus robur and Salix atrocinerea; that is, 4-species treatments) with mixtures that excluded alder (3-species treatments) and all the monocultures (1-species treatments). The loss of alder reduced decomposition rates, despite the existence of an overall negative diversity effect after 3 weeks of exposure (that is, monocultures decomposed faster than mixtures) and no diversity effect after 6 weeks. Aquatic hyphomycete and detritivore assemblage structure in the mixture without alder differed from those of the mixture with alder and the monocultures, and the former had lower fungal sporulation rate and taxon richness. Our results suggest that alder loss from the riparian vegetation can significantly slow down the processing of organic matter in streams and produce shifts in stream assemblages, with potential consequences on overall ecosystem functioning. We highlight the importance of assessing the ecological consequences of losing single species, particularly those especially vulnerable to stressors, to complement the multiple studies that have assessed the effects of random species loss.

Moderation Effects of Institutional Quality, Diversity, Income inequality and Globalization on Social Cohesion: An Empirical evidence.

Social cohesion is both an end, as well as a mean, to achieve other economic and developmental goals. As an end, a more cohesive society can be thought of as a peaceful place to live in. As a mean, social cohesion has various economic and developmental implications. Therefore, nurturing social cohesion can be a desirable objective and knowing about different determinants of social cohesion can be helpful in this regard. Ethno-linguistic diversity and socioeconomic deprivations have been identified as such determinants in the existing literature. Well-functioning institutions can also be good predictors of social cohesion in a society. They can help to mitigate the negative effects of diversity on social cohesion. However, hardly any study has empirically investigated the moderating effects of institutions on social cohesion. The current study has tried to fill this gap. For this purpose, a cross country analysis has been done by employing the Least Squares Dummy Variables (LSDV) technique for empirical estimations. Institutional quality has been measured with the help of an index that has been constructed by taking into account the political, legal, and economic dimensions of institutional quality. The results suggest that diversity, income inequality, and globalization have negative whereas institutional quality has positive effects on social cohesion. The use of the interactive term of institutional quality with diversity, income inequality, and globalization reveals that institutional quality works to nullify the negative effects of diversity, income inequality, and globalization on social cohesion. .

Learning Against the Wind: Diversity and Performance on the Ships of the Dutch East India Company

Learning is of paramount importance to organizations, often hinging on the accumulation of experience among workers. The returns from experience, however, are far from certain in large groups, marked by complex interdependencies and composed of a demographically diverse workforce. How do organizations manage to learn and improve their performance under these conditions? We claim that the standardization of work practices and procedures provides two key advantages. First, it magnifies the positive returns that a unit reaps from the experience of its workers. Second, standardization anchors the accumulated experience of workers to organizational routines that transcend the individual units in which they have worked. Increasing experience eases coordination among workers and attenuates the negative effects of diversity on a unit’s performance. We test these arguments using data tracking the composition of ship crews in the Dutch East India Company, an organization that witnessed significant efforts at standardizing work practices and procedures in the face of increasing national diversity. We find preliminary support for our hypotheses from analyses of the time to completion of 2,200 voyages to Asia during the period between 1700 and 1796.

Shifts in Key Leaf Litter Traits Can Predict Effects of Plant Diversity Loss on Decomposition in Streams

Plant biodiversity loss in riparian forests is known to alter key stream ecosystem processes such as leaf litter decomposition. One potential mechanism mediating this biodiversity–decomposition relationship is the increased variability of plant functional traits at higher levels of biodiversity, providing more varied resources for decomposers and thus improving their function. We explored this in a field experiment exposing litter from different assemblages with low or high trait variability (measured through phylogenetic distance, PD) to microbial decomposers and invertebrate detritivores within litterbags in a low-order stream. Litter assemblages generally lost less mass but more phosphorus (P) than expected from monocultures, and nitrogen (N) tended to increase in the absence of detritivores and decrease in their presence, with little effect of PD. In contrast, there were strong influences of mean values and variability of specific traits (mostly N, P and condensed tannins) on decomposition and on net diversity effects. The negative diversity effect on litter mass loss was mainly driven by negative complementarity (that is, physical or chemical interference among species or traits), although there was positive selection (that is, particular species or traits with large effects on decomposition) in high-PD assemblages with detritivores. High-PD assemblages tended to have more invertebrates and attracted more typical litter-consuming detritivores. Our study suggests that decomposition of litter assemblages is mainly driven by concentration and variability of several key litter traits, rather than overall trait heterogeneity (measured through PD). However, differences in invertebrates colonizing high-PD and low-PD assemblages pointed to potential long-term effects of PD on decomposition.

Ethnic diversity and citizens’ support for local public good provision: Evidence from California parcel tax elections

How does ethnic diversity within a jurisdiction impact residents’ demand for local public goods? This question is central to the literature on diversity and local spending but remains relatively untested. To fill this gap, we study outcomes from California school district ballot measures to increase school funding. We use an instrumental variable approach to account for endogeneity in diversity. We find no evidence that diversity impacts willingness to be taxed to fund local schools. Our findings suggest that the negative effects of diversity on spending may be occurring through other channels, such as the decision-making of local officials.

Evergreenness influences fine root growth more than tree diversity in a common garden experiment.

Recent studies have reported positive net diversity effects on aboveground tree growth. However, whether similar effects occur belowground through root investment, and whether such effects are related to evergreenness of tree communities, is less clear. Here we studied vertical distribution of standing fine root biomass of twelve North American temperate tree species planted in a common garden tree diversity experiment of varying species richness and evergreenness to test whether belowground niche complementarity of trees could explain positive diversity effects reported aboveground. We tested two alternative hypotheses: trees in mixtures increase uptake of soil resources (1) by increasing vertical root stratification and/or producing a greater fine root density (mgcm-3) or (2) by producing similar or fewer fine roots that are potentially more efficient. Additionally, we hypothesized that proportional allocation to belowground biomass increases with evergreenness of tree communities. Fine roots were sampled in six layers of 5-10cm, from 0 to 40cm depth in single-, two- and four-species mixtures. We did not observe an effect of species richness on rooting depth or root density, refuting the hypothesis that aboveground overyielding in tree mixtures is linked to fine root overyielding. Rather, we observed a significant negative diversity effect (- 7.6%) on total fine root density, suggesting overall less investment to fine roots with increasing diversity. The strong positive effect of evergreeness on proportional allocation to fine roots over aboveground parts suggests that deciduous tree roots may be generally more efficient at absorbing soil resources, at least in the early years after tree establishment.

Interactions in self-assembled microbial communities saturate with diversity

How the diversity of organisms competing for or sharing resources influences community function is an important question in ecology but has rarely been explored in natural microbial communities. These generally contain large numbers of species making it difficult to disentangle how the effects of different interactions scale with diversity. Here, we show that changing diversity affects measures of community function in relatively simple communities but that increasing richness beyond a threshold has little detectable effect. We generated self-assembled communities with a wide range of diversity by growth of cells from serially diluted seawater on brown algal leachate. We subsequently isolated the most abundant taxa from these communities via dilution-to-extinction in order to compare productivity functions of the entire community to those of individual taxa. To parse the effect of different types of organismal interactions, we defined relative total function (RTF) as an index for positive or negative effects of diversity on community function. Our analysis identified three overall regimes with increasing diversity. At low richness (<12 taxa), positive and negative effects of interactions were both weak, while at moderate richness (12–26 taxa), community resource uptake increased but the carbon use efficiency decreased. Finally, beyond 26 taxa, the effect of interactions on community function saturated and further diversity increases did not affect community function. Although more diverse communities had overall greater access to resources, on average individual taxa within these communities had lower resource availability and reduced carbon use efficiency. Our results thus suggest competition and complementation simultaneously increase with diversity but both saturate at a threshold.

Biodiversity increases and decreases ecosystem stability.

Losses and gains in species diversity affect ecological stability1-7 and the sustainability of ecosystem functions and services8-13. Experiments and models have revealed positive, negative and no effects of diversity on individual components of stability, such as temporal variability, resistance and resilience2,3,6,11,12,14. How these stability components covary remains poorly understood15. Similarly, the effects of diversity on overall ecosystem stability16, which is conceptually akin to ecosystem multifunctionality17,18, remain unknown. Here we studied communities of aquatic ciliates to understand how temporal variability, resistance and overall ecosystem stability responded to diversity (that is, species richness) in a large experiment involving 690 micro-ecosystems sampled 19 times over 40 days, resulting in 12,939 samplings. Species richness increased temporal stability but decreased resistance to warming. Thus, two stability components covaried negatively along the diversity gradient. Previous biodiversity manipulation studies rarely reported such negative covariation despite general predictions of the negative effects of diversity on individual stability components3. Integrating our findings with the ecosystem multifunctionality concept revealed hump- and U-shaped effects of diversity on overall ecosystem stability. That is, biodiversity can increase overall ecosystem stability when biodiversity is low, and decrease it when biodiversity is high, or the opposite with a U-shaped relationship. The effects of diversity on ecosystem multifunctionality would also be hump- or U-shaped if diversity had positive effects on some functions and negative effects on others. Linking the ecosystem multifunctionality concept and ecosystem stability can transform the perceived effects of diversity on ecological stability and may help to translate this science into policy-relevant information.

Effects of dynamic and spatial externalities on local growth: Evidence from Brazil

AbstractThis paper analyses the impact of economic externalities on the local growth emphasizing the industrial, geographic, and temporal scope of agglomeration economies. Thus, we estimated a spatial dynamic panel model using GMM associated with the use of data at different levels of sectoral aggregation. Estimation takes into account the endogeneity of agglomeration economies. Our database consists of 558 Brazilian regions for 1995–2015. The main results suggest that while externalities act in a local dimension they also have a regional scale. These externalities are determined by their temporal trajectory. The effects of agglomeration economies on local growth are sensitive to the choice of sectoral aggregation. Local growth exhibits positive specialization effects and negative diversity effects. However, greater industrial diversity of neighbouring regions has a positive impact on local growth.

Can Female National Leaders Mitigate the Negative Effects of Diversity?

Racial/ethnic diversity within groups, organizations, and even countries can have negative externalities if left unmitigated. The effects of inequality and exclusion can hinder overall productivity. An experimental study (N = 183) revealed that female leaders are expected to increase empowerment and improve economic outcomes more than male leaders in ethnically diverse settings. Surveys from over 244,000 subjects in 77 countries revealed that female leaders are associated with greater tolerance for diversity and self-expression, especially in highly diverse countries. Lastly, analysis of over 5,800 leader-year observations in 126 countries from 1950 – 2009 revealed that female leaders in highly ethnically diverse countries had mitigating effects on diversity that resulted in positive economic growth. The results imply that leadership in more diverse environments is key to making positive structural shifts around inequality and participation.

The Nature of LMX Differentiation and Diversity Climate

Diversity climate has been recognized as key to preventing negative diversity effects and fostering positive diversity effects. Despite this consensus, the field has recently been criticized for us...

The impact of team diversity on role clarity : The mediating effects of interaction frequency

According to the social categorization theory, people tend to categorize their group members into in-group or out-group members according to differences in demographic attributes. Generally, people prefer interacting with in-group members to out-group members. Our research focuses on which demographic attributes affect social categorization. We examined the influences of differences in gender, age, and educational background on role clarity in 58 teams in a Korean public enterprise. Moreover, we examined the mediating role of interaction frequency on the relationship between team diversity and role clarity. Our study provides evidence that interaction frequency can and does mediate the relationship between team diversity and role clarity. Gender diversity and educational background diversity have negative impact on interaction among team members, and consequentially lower role clarity within team. This study makes several academic and practical contributions. First, this study shows how team diversity affects role clarity within the team. The diversity of team members will make it difficult for an individual to find a team member who is similar to himself/herself and who feels intimacy, which may lower the quality and frequency of interaction. The lower the quality and frequency of communication among members reduces the opportunity to exchange and share information about each other, making it difficult to clearly identify and share their roles. Our study provides evidence that interaction frequency can and does mediate the relationship between team diversity and role clarity. Second, this study considers gender, educational background and age in the Korean context among the various dimensions of team diversity. Among them gender diversity and educational background diversity except age diversity have negative impact on interaction among team members, and consequentially lower role clarity within team. The team with many heterogeneous members of gender and educational background had less interaction frequency among the members, and the role clarity was also lower. Meanwhile, with regard to diversity in age, the company has implemented several strategies to do away with inefficient seniority rule which was dominant social norms in Korean organizations. There-through, age diversity in this study appears to be positively related with role clarity as well as interaction frequency, and not significant. It is suggested that managing the demographic diversity of team is an important factor in enhancing the team interaction frequency and role clarity. These results show that the negative effects of diversity can be overcome to some extent by corporate level efforts.

DOES REVERSE CAUSALITY EXPLAINS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE AND TECHNOLOGICAL DIVERSITY?

Previous studies have highlighted technological innovation as a key instrument for economic development. However, although the relationship between innovation and economic growth has been extensively explored, few studies have investigated the impacts of crucial dimensions of innovation on economic growth. This paper presents one of the first empirical attempts to analyze how the “diversity” aspect of technological progress (or innovation) influences economic performance by considering the possible bidirectional causal effects between these two factors. A series of econometric techniques, including a two-stage-least-squares instrumental variable and dynamic autoregressive distributed lag model, are applied on a dataset of 55 countries. The dataset includes patent data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office and combined macroeconomic data from the World Bank’s development indicators and International Monetary Fund’s economic outlook databases. The results show that generally, technological diversity does not directly affect economic growth. By contrast, a negative effect of diversity on GDP per capita is observed in non-high-income countries. This study contributes to the macroeconomics and innovation management literature by providing an integrated empirical application of various popular firm management theories and a well-known endogenous economic growth theory.

Tree species diversity alters plant defense investment in an experimental forest plantation in southern Mexico

AbstractHow plant species diversity affects traits conferring herbivore resistance (e.g., chemical defenses), as well as the mechanisms underlying such effects, has received little attention. One potential mechanism for the effect of diversity on plant defenses is that increased plant growth at high diversity could lead to reduced investment in defenses via growth–defense trade‐offs. We measured tree growth (diameter at breast height) and collected leaves to quantify total phenolics in 2.5‐year‐old plants of six tropical tree species (N = 597 plants) in a young experimental plantation in southern Mexico. Selected plants were classified as monocultures or as polycultures represented by mixtures of four of the six species examined. Tree species diversity had a significant negative effect on total phenolics, where polycultures exhibited a 13 percent lower mean concentration than monocultures. However, there was marked variation in the effects of diversity on defenses among tree species, with some species exhibiting strong reductions in phenolic levels in mixtures, whereas others were unresponsive. In addition, tree species diversity had no effect on growth, nor was the negative effect of diversity on chemical defenses mediated by a growth–defense trade‐off. These results demonstrate that tree diversity can alter investment in chemical defenses in long‐lived tree species but that such effect may not always be under strong control by plant endogenous resource allocation trade‐offs. Regardless of the underlying mechanism, these findings have important implications for predicting effects on consumers and ecosystem function.

Conifer proportion explains fine root biomass more than tree species diversity and site factors in major European forest types

Abstract Fine roots (diameter ≤ 2 mm) contribute significantly to the forest carbon cycle and are essential for resource acquisition from the soil. We conducted a study to assess the relationships between tree and ground vegetation fine root biomass and tree species diversity (monocultures compared to 2–5 species mixtures), conifer proportion and other site factors (stand basal area, soil carbon stocks and C:N ratio) in the six major European forest types, boreal forest in Finland, temperate forests in Poland, Germany and Romania, thermophilous deciduous forests in Italy, and Mediterranean forests in Spain. We sampled the fine roots of trees and ground vegetation to the depth of 20 cm in the mineral soil and allocated the fine root biomass to individual tree species using near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS). We did not find any general positive effects of tree species diversity on the fine root biomass of trees or ground vegetation across the forest types and tree species combinations. However, our results suggest that tree fine root biomass increases with tree species diversity in pure broadleaf forests, but not in pure conifer forests. Species diversity explained 7% of the variation in tree fine root biomass in the broadleaf stands. The narrow tree species diversity gradient (1–2 species) in the conifer forests compared to the broadleaf forests (1−4) may have decreased the probability of conifer species combinations with below-ground functional traits conducive to over-yielding. Some evidence of diversity-mediated changes in the vertical rooting patterns of broadleaf trees and ground vegetation were found within the entire organic and 0–20 cm mineral soil layer although the weighted mean depth of fine root biomass was not affected. Negative diversity effects were found in the organic layer and positive diversity effects in the 0–10 cm mineral soil layer for broadleaf tree fine root biomass. Diversity effects were negative for ground vegetation fine root biomass in the 0–10 cm mineral soil layer. There was a general positive effect of conifer proportion on total fine root biomass in the organic layer, but not in the mineral soil layers. In general conifer proportion and site factors explained more of the variation in tree fine root biomass than tree species diversity. More research covering the annual variation in fine root biomass and deeper soil layers is needed before recommending managing species-rich forest for increasing below-ground biomass and carbon pools.