Benefits to Cultural Diversity

HT: David P. Murray

Is there a diversity dividend? Yes, according to an elite panel of business leaders at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos. In the BBC’s report on the discussion, chief business correspondent Linda Yueh cites the following evidence to support the panelists’ advocacy for diversity:

• Boards of directors with greater diversity generate more dividends.
• Numerous studies show that adding women to the labor force increases national output, or gross domestic product.
• An MIT study found that changing from all-male or all-female workforces to equal numbers of both sexes could raise revenues by around 40 percent.

Walgreens CEO Randy Lewis’s book No Greatness Without Goodness: How a Father's Love Changed a Company and Sparked a Movement advances this “profit-from-diversity” narrative by demonstrating how Walgreens increased profits and reduced staff turnover by hiring more employees with disabilities and other special needs. As creative companies like Apple and Google have also found, this profit-motive is proving more powerful at building diverse workforces than enforced quotas, threatening legislation, or guilting companies into action.

So why aren't we using the profit-motive to build more racially diverse churches and to increase racial diversity in our Christian lives?

You can read the rest here.