Influence of Diversity on Conflicts, Turnover, and Performance
Do Lim Choi & Yun Jeong Kim
(Chungnam National Univ.)
Introduction
Diversity issue has been treated as an important element in organizational
management in many advanced countries(Barsade, Ward et al. 2000; Pitts 2009).
As evidence, many papers on diversity were presented at 2012 American Society
for Public Administration Conference held in Las Vegas, NV. Initially, diversity
meant something to be related to demographic variables, affirmative action (AA),
and equal employment opportunity (EEO). In other word, the term was
considered as something equal to the participation of more colors and women.
Therefore, the concept was more normative. It means that more colors and
women in organization are meaningful.
Since 1980s, according as organizations have the diverse workforce, many
practitioners and scholars have had interests in workforce diversity(Wentling and
Palma-Rivas 1998; Mor-Barak 1999). The focus of diversity has been expanded
from simple demographic characteristics to belief, background, and function
(Thomas Jr 1990; Slack 1997; D'Netto and Sohal 1999; Gardenswartz and Rowe
1
2010). Unlikely in the past, they would like to reveal the relationship between
diversity and organizational performance(Pelled, Eisenhardt et al. 1999). It,
however, is difficult to find empirical studies that examine the relationship
between diversity and performance in the public sector, although there are some
studies in the private sector(Pitts 2005; Pitts 2009).
In the past decades, empirical studies have focused on direct relationship
between demographic characteristic variables and performance, but recently a
group of scholars tries to suggest more sophisticated model to explain diversity
and performance. For example, conflict variable – emotional or task conflict – can
be used as a moderate variable between diversity and performance(Pelled,
Eisenhardt et al. 1999).
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between diversity and
conflicts, and performance. All three variables are classified into two dimensions.
Diversity variable can be classified into indirectly work related and directly work
related. Conflict variable is divided into two categories: emotional and task. Finally,
performance is categorized into turnover and cognitive performance. This model
is very similar to that of Pelled and her colleagues(1999).
Theoretical Background and Hypotheses
Diversity, Emotional Conflict, and Task Conflict
2
Organizations are consisted with employees who have various demographic
characteristics. Employee composition in gender, age, race, education, tenure,
functional background, and so on differs according to organizations. The diversity
in demographic characteristics will influence emotional conflict. It can be
explained by the term “categorization”, which is a very useful way to simplify and
make our perceived organizations more predictable(Tajfel, Billig et al. 1971).
Employees in organizations are categorized by demographic characteristics and
categorization is a good means to explain people who belong to any group that
shows the same demographic characteristic. Once categorization is formed,
people try to describe the core characteristics of the group and try to compare
with other groups. Categorization can be formed by gender, age, tenure,
education, originality, race, functional background, and so on. This can be also
explained by the model of inclusion and exclusion of Mor-Barak(1999).
When categorizations interact, there is higher possibility that conflicts occur
because they have different tendency in both thinking and acting. They will share
different values, assumptions, and expectations according to categorization.
Majority group tends to have negative attitudes, discrimination and prejudice,
stereotyping, and racism to minority groups(Wentling and Palma-Rivas 1998). If
diversity in demographic variables increases, individuals in workgroup have more
chances to interact people who have different characteristics. It will cause any
type of conflict in the process of interaction. As discussed above, each
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categorization has its own unique values, assumptions, and expectations.
Therefore, the more diverse categorization is the more conflicts happen.
According to the demographic characteristics, different conflict can be
stimulated in organization. Two types of conflict can be discussed: emotional and
task conflict(Pelled 1996; Pelled, Eisenhardt et al. 1999). First, emotional or
affective conflict means anger, resentment, and other negative feelings caused by
the interaction of different social categories in the same workgroup. Among
diversity variables, age, gender, originality, and race will contribute to the forming
of emotional conflict in process of interaction. For example, young generation will
show different way of thinking from old generation. Likewise, man and woman
will put emphasis on different values(Gilligan 1982). As a result, when they
confront in the process of work, negative feelings will be produced.
Hypothesis1: Diversity in gender, age, and originality will have stronger positive
associations with emotional conflict.
Second is task or substantive conflict, which is more related to work than to
emotion. Other demographic characteristics will bring more task conflict than
emotional conflict. Task conflict means conflicts occurring due to different ideas,
different ways to do work, or different work experience(Carrell and Mann 1995).
For example, functional background is more associated with task conflict.
4
According to employees, experiences that they have had will be different. There
are some employees who experience just a few functional departments and
others who experience various functional departments. They may have different
belief structures or way of thinking mechanism. When employees who have
different functional background get together to decide what to do, they may
spend more time to reach an agreement than those who have the same or
similar functional background. Also, education will have similar effect on conflict.
Different education level among employees will bring different ideas or
suggestions in work. It will cause work related conflict.
Hypothesis2: Diversity in education, tenure in organization, and functional
background will have stronger positive associations with task conflict.
Tenure in workgroup means the term that employees have worked in the
current workgroup. Employees who work for longer term in the same workgroup
will form and share similar values, beliefs, and expectations. They will more easily
accept
different
categories.
As
a
result,
emotional
conflict
will
be
weakened(O'Reilly, Caldwell et al. 1989). Likewise, the negative effect of diversity
in education, tenure in organization, and functional background on task conflict
will be weakened, as tenure in the same workgroup increases. Employees who
have worked in the same workgroup have more chances to learn from one
5
another. Therefore, conflict relevant to task will decrease.
Hypothesis3: Group longevity will diminish the positive associations between
diversity variables and conflict in work groups.
Emotional and Task Conflict as Mediators: Links to Turnover
Turnover means rate that employees leave their organization. Without having
other alternatives, leaving current organization is not easy, because they need job
to live or support their families. In order to measure the rate of turnover,
employees’ opinion, whether they have any intention to leave or not, has been
asked in many previous empirical studies.
Emotional conflict caused by diversity will increase turnover. Because emotional
conflict is relevant to anger, being isolated, and hatred, employees who feel
emotional conflict in current organization will have turnover intention. In contrast
to emotional conflict, task conflict caused by diversity will not be significantly
associated with turnover intention. Task conflict is not based on category bias,
prejudice, or personal negative feeling.
Hypothesis4: Emotional conflict will be positively associated with turnover
intention.
Hypothesis5: Task conflict will not be a significant variable to influence
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turnover intention.
Task and Emotional Conflict as Mediators: Links to Performance
Performance has been interpreted as a term to have various meanings. It may
be interchangeably used with productivity, efficiency, consequence, result,
effectiveness, output, outcome, and so on. Simply, performance implies
consequences or results that organizations or employees accomplish in a certain
time period.
Performance can be measured in two ways. First, it can be measured by the
secondary data. Through real numbers, goal achievement, efficiency, output, and
so on can be evaluated. Second, it can be measured by employees’ cognitive
judgment. In other words, performance level can be asked to employees. For
examples, following questions can be employed to measure organizational
performance. How much productive is it? How much efficient is it?
Task conflict is able to be evaluated as a process seeking better alternatives or
making better decisions to achieve organizational goals. Therefore, generally
speaking, task conflict is necessary to improve organizational performance.
However, emotional conflict will not be a significant variable to explain
organizational performance in organization. Rather, it may play a role to decrease
organizational performance.
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Hypothesis6: Task conflict will be positively associated with performance.
Hypothesis7: Emotional conflict will decrease organizational performance.
Methodology
Research Framework
Research framework will be briefly explained here, although it is done in
theoretical background in details. As in Figure 1, three dimensions are identified:
independent, mediator, and dependent variables. First, there are two types of
diversity variables: indirectly job related and directly job related variables. The
former includes gender, age, and originality, the latter includes functional
background, tenure, and education. Second, there are two types of conflict
variables: emotional and task conflicts. Third, turnover and cognitive performance
are used as dependent variables.
Less Task Related Variables:
Emotional
Gender, Age, Originality
Conflict
Turnover
Longevity
More Task Related Variables:
Functional Background.
Task Conflict
Education, Tenure
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Performance
<Figure 1> Research Framework
In the relationship between diversity and conflict, diversity variables that are not
directly related to task will be positively associated with emotional conflict.
Diversity variables directly related to task will be positively associated with task
conflict. And longevity will alleviate the effect of diversity variables on conflict
variables. In the relationship between conflict and performance, emotional conflict
will be negatively associated with employees’ turnover and task conflict will be
positively associated with cognitive performance. And emotional conflict will have
negative effect to performance and task conflict will also have negative effect to
employees’ turnover.
Measurement and Research Methods
Initially, it was planned to ask direct values on diversity, but public servants felt
uncomfortable with it. They seemed to worry that somebody might know about
who is who. Also, they didn’t know about exact information on colleagues’ age,
tenure, and educational institution that coworkers graduate. Many respondents in
pilot study didn’t answer to questions such as final educational institution, their
hometown, age, and so on. So, instead of asking direct information or values, the
degree of diversity was asked. For example, what is the level of diversity in age?
Each question has five point Likert scale.
9
To test hypotheses suggested in this paper, a few quantitative analysis methods
were implemented. For basic analyses, frequency, mean, and correlation analysis
were implemented. And for hypothesis test, regression and path analysis were
employed.
Findings
Basic Statistics
This section reports basic information and statistics for further research such as
response rate, demographic characteristics, and Cronbach alpha.
Response Rate
A metropolitan city was selected for this research and respondents are those
who are working in the metropolitan city hall. Total 172 questionnaires were
distributed in March 2012 and 152 collected. It showed a response rate of 88.4%.
All questionnaires collected were used in final analysis.
Descriptive Statistics
Detailed descriptive statistics are reported in Table 1. As shown in Table 1, 68.4
percent of the respondents were male and 31.6 percent female. Most of the
employees were in the 40s (62.5%). Regarding education, 61.8 percent were
university graduates and 21.7 percent had graduate degrees. Of the respondents,
10
46.6 percent had worked for 11 to 20 years and 37.7 percent for 21 to 30 years.
In functional background, most of respondents (82.1%) had experienced less than
11 work types. Finally, most of respondents were from Daejeon(44.3%) and
Chungnam(30.9%).
<Table 1> Demographic Characteristics
Classification
Gender
Age
Education
Work years
Frequency(total no.: 152)*
Number
Percentage
Male
104
68.4
Female
48
31.6
20s
1
0.6
30s
20
13.2
40s
95
62.5
Older than 50
36
23.7
High school
15
9.9
Community college
10
6.6
University
94
61.8
Graduate school
33
21.7
1 to 10 years
13
8.9
11 to 20 years
68
46.6
21 to 30 years
55
37.7
11
More than 30 years
10
6.8
Functional
Less than 6
64
47.8
background
6 to 10
46
34.3
11 to 15
11
8.2
16 to 20
7
5.2
More than 20
6
4.5
Daejeon
66
44.3
Chungnam
46
30.9
Chungbuk
20
13.4
others
17
11.6
Originality
*: Each demographic characteristic may have a frequency missing which indicates
the number of respondents that did not mark that question.
Credibility and Correlation
Table 2shows means, standard deviation, Cronbach alph, and correlation
coefficients. Through this table, one can obtain basic information about the
thoughts of respondents for main variables and to a degree guess the results. A
Cronbach alpha was used to measure the ‘unidimensionality’ of multiple
questions. All variables show reliability coefficients of 0.7 or higher which
confirms the unidimensionality of variables. Among four questions to measure
emotional conflict, one question was removed, because respondents didn’t
recognize it as the same dimension.
12
Regarding correlation, all variables are statistically significant with each other.
Emotional conflict variable is negatively correlated with task conflict and
performance and positively with turnover. Task conflict variable is negatively
correlated with turnover and positively with performance. Finally, turnover variable
is negatively correlated with performance.
<Table 2> Means, Standard Deviation, Credibility, and Correlation (n=152)
Correlation coefficient
Variables
Mean Std.
Emotional
Task
α
Turnover Performance
Emotional
1.0
2.15
0.70
0.7
3.90
0.72
0.7
2.96
0.90
0.8
3.77
0.72
0.7
conflict
Task conflict
-0.57***
1.0
Turnover
0.27***
-0.19**
1.0
Performance
-0.49***
0.71***
-0.22***
**: significant at 0.05
1.0
***: significant at 0.01
Respondents recognize that task conflict is higher than emotional conflict.
Almost half of respondents have thought of turnover and they have positive mind
toward their performance.
Hypothesis Test
13
Less work-related variables and emotional conflict
Hypothesis1: Diversity in gender, age, and originality will have stronger positive
associations with emotional conflict.
As shown in table 3, gender and originality diversity variables were associated
with emotional conflict, but in the opposite direction. Gender diversity was a
significant variable to increase emotional conflict, but originality diversity was
negatively associated with emotional conflict. Maybe, the samples of this study
are inappropriate to measure the effect of originality diversity, because most of
respondents are from Daejeon(44.3%) and Chungchung Province(44.3%). Further
research will be necessary in the future. And age diversity was not a variable to
influence emotional conflict. Thus, hypothesis 1 would be partially accepted.
<Table 3> Relationships between less work-related variables and emotional
conflict
Independent variables
Dependent variable: Emotional conflict
Beta
Standard error
t
Gender diversity
.16730
.30538
2.04**
Age diversity
-.06301
.07082
-.78
Originality diversity
-.23185
.06653
-2.86***
F Value: 5.20
R-Square: 0.0977
**: significant at 0.05 ***: significant at 0.01
14
Adj R-Square: 0.0789
More work-related variables and task conflict
Hypothesis2: Diversity in education, tenure in organization, and functional
background will have stronger positive associations with task conflict.
As shown in table 4, functional background diversity and tenure diversity in
public service were statistically associated with task conflict. Both variables are
positively associated. It means that task conflict increases when employees have
diverse functional background experience. Also, task conflict increases when
employees have diverse tenure. And educational diversity was not a variable to
affect task conflict. Thus, hypothesis 2 would be partially accepted.
<Table 4> Relationships between more work-related variables and task conflict
Independent variables
Dependent variable: Task conflict
Beta
Standard error
t
Educational diversity
.01933
.36497
.24
Functional background diversity
.20855
.07079
2.51**
Tenure diversity in public service
.18106
.08127
2.15**
F Value: 5.28
R-Square: 0.1004
Adj R-Square: 0.0814
**: significant at 0.05 ***: significant at 0.01
Effect on group longevity between diversity variables and conflicts
15
Hypothesis3: Group longevity will diminish the positive associations between
diversity variables and conflicts in work groups.
Group longevity was not a significant variable to mediate the relationships
between diversity variables and conflicts in work groups. In another word, there
was no difference in the relationships between diversity variables and conflicts
according to group longevity.
Relationship between conflicts and turnover
Hypothesis4: Emotional conflict will be positively associated with turnover
intention.
Hypothesis5: Task conflict will not be a significant variable to influence
turnover intention.
As shown in table 5, emotional conflict was positively associated with turnover
intention. It means that employees have intention to leave current organization
when they feel more emotional conflict. Thus, hypothesis 4 would be accepted.
Task conflict was not a significant variable to influence turnover intention. Thus,
hypothesis 5 would also be accepted.
<Table 5> Relationships between emotional conflict and performance
Independent variables
Dependent variable: Turnover
Beta
16
Standard error
t
Emotional conflict
.23721
.12691
2.44**
Task conflict
-.05803
.12233
-0.60
F Value: 5.81
R-Square: 0.0751
Adj R-Square: 0.0622
**: significant at 0.05
Relationship between conflicts and performance
Hypothesis6: Task conflict will be positively associated with performance.
Hypothesis7: Emotional conflict will decrease organizational performance.
As shown in table 6, both emotional and task conflict were statistically
associated with performance variable, but in the opposite direction. Like in
hypothesis 6, the higher task conflict is, the greater organizational performance is.
On the contrary, the higher emotional conflict is, the lower organizational
performance is. Thus, hypothesis 6 and 7 would be accepted.
<Table 6> Relationships between emotional conflict and performance
Independent variables
Dependent variable: Performance
Beta
Standard error
t
Emotional conflict
-.16174
.07293
-2.29**
Task conflict
.61428
.07040
8.71***
F Value: 5.81
R-Square: 0.0751
**: significant at 0.05 ***: significant at 0.01
17
Adj R-Square: 0.0622
Implications and Conclusion
In two aspects, the usefulness of this study can be explained: theoretical and
practical. First is a theoretical aspect. This research is the primary study in Korea,
especially in the public sector. This will be a starting point to discuss about the
effect of diversity variables on various result variables.
Second is a practical aspect. First, organizations should start to consider gender
composition as a variable to affect conflict, satisfaction, and performance. It
doesn’t mean that there is the best composition in gender. Because gender
composition causes emotional conflict, organizations or leaders ought to make
more efforts to reduce the level of conflict. Second, emotional conflict is a
variable to explain the opinion toward turnover. Organizations should pay more
attention to workgroups that have a few females with most males. Third, task
conflict is helpful to increase organizational performance, so organizations should
try to maintain the appropriate level of task conflict in workgroups considering
various function experience and tenure in public service. Fourth, emotional
conflict is harmful for organizational performance.
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