تنوع کار و بهره وری شرکت

Using a matched employer–employee data-set, we analyze how workforce diversity associates with the productivity of firms in Denmark, following two main econometric routes. In the first one, we estimate a standard Cobb–Douglas function, calculate the implied total factor productivity and relate the latter to diversity statistics in a second stage. This reduced-form approach allows us to identify which types of labor heterogeneity appear to descriptively matter. In the second approach, we move toward a richer production function specification, which takes different types of labor as inputs and that allows for flexible substitution patterns, and possible quality differences between types. Both methods show that workforce diversity in ethnicity is negatively associated with firm productivity. The evidence regarding diversity in education is mixed.

Diversity in the labor force is an increasing reality in many developed countries. This diversity results from, among other things, the following major factors: policy measures that counteract population aging and anti-discrimination measures, the growth in immigration from diverse countries experienced in recent decades and the educational and skill upgrading of workforces.1 All of these factors lead to increasing diversity within the labor force in terms of age, gender, ethnicity and skills.

Using a comprehensive linked employer–employee data-set, this paper primarily investigates the empirical relationship of diversity in workers' ethnic-cultural, educational and demographic characteristics with firm productivity in Denmark. Unlike the majority of previous empirical studies, which focused on single aspects of labor diversity, we provide a number of findings that extensively explore the overall consequences of firm workforce heterogeneity for firm performance. Specifically, we follow two main methodological routes to investigate the link between workforce diversity and productivity. In the first one, we estimate a standard Cobb–Douglas function, calculate the implied total factor productivity and relate the latter to our labor diversity indices in a second stage. The results from this reduced-form approach allow us to identify which types of labor heterogeneity appear to descriptively matter and suggest that labor diversity in ethnicity (education) is negatively (positively) associated with firm productivity, whereas the demographic diversity seems not to matter. Several robustness checks and the results obtained by implementing the IV method are in line with these descriptive findings. The main limit of the reduced-form approach is that it does not formally take into account that the labor input is non-homogeneous in the production function, i.e., labor of different types is of different quality (Hellerstein and Neumark, 2004; Iranzo et al., 2008 and Fox and Smeets, 2011; Irarrazabal et al., 2014). We therefore move toward a richer production function specification, which takes different types of labor as inputs and that allows for flexible substitution patterns, and possible quality differences between types. The results obtained from this structural estimation approach suggest that labor heterogeneity in terms of ethnicity decreases firm output and that it is not optimal to have dispersion in terms of employees' education.