Diversity’s much touted benefits bump into research findings on ineffectiveness

“To the dismay of many, relative to homogeneous groups, members of diverse groups display less attachment to each other, show less commitment to their respective organizations, communicate less with one another, miss work more often, experience more conflict, and take more time to reach decisions.” Ouch.

This discouraging summary of research on the drawbacks of groups made up of different demographics, with many citations omitted, comes from the Acad. of Mgt. Rev., 2004 #1, at 9 (See my post of May 26, 2010: downsides of heterogeneous work teams.).

Do general counsel who push their departments to hire diversity firms and diverse in-house staff disagree with these findings (See my post of June 10, 2010: Inclusion Initiative.)? Are they ignorant of such research? If they are aware of them and have no reason to disagree, they must be advocating based on values other than efficiency.