Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
10483075 | Research Policy | 2013 | 10 Pages |
Abstract
We assess the impact of R&D manpower diversity on firms' technological performance. Relying on insights from two theoretical perspectives on team diversity (i.e. social categorization perspective and information decision-making perspective), we hypothesize that both demographic and task-related sources of diversity within firms' R&D workforce influence technological performance. In addition, we expect that these two dimensions of diversity interact with each other. To test our hypotheses, we rely on survey data from 938 Singaporean firms, providing in-depth information on three sources of demographic diversity (i.e. gender, age, and nationality of R&D employees) and two sources of task-related diversity (i.e. educational and knowledge area background of R&D employees). Our findings point to significant interactions between different sources of R&D manpower diversity. In particular, we identify substitutive relationships between (a) educational and gender diversity, and (b) nationality and knowledge area diversity.
Keywords
Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities
Business, Management and Accounting
Business and International Management
Authors
Dries Faems, Annapoornima M. Subramanian,