How to write a critically appraised topic

CRITICALLY APPRAISED TOPIC:

IMPACT OF EMPLOYEE DIVERSITY ON ORGANIZATIOAL PERFORMANCE

Background:

As the rapid growth of globalization and the increased economic interactions between the multinational companies all over the world, the flow and allocation of human resource, many companies have hired employees from different countries with different human capital backgrounds and biological-demographical backgrounds. International human resource management is gradually regarded as one of the best choices for multinational companies to improve their competitions and improve the performance of the programs/ projects. Besides, as the developments of human rights and disabled people’s rights, more women and disabled people could start their commercial career. The diversity of employees is becoming the mainstream for modern multinational companies. Although the diversity of employees could make corporations more influential and competitive, it could also cause many problems such as internal conflicts, tension, language barriers and the increase of disagreements. The diversity of employees has two face, one face is positive and beneficial to improve the performance of corporations in projects/ programs, however, the other face is negative and controversial. Many experts and studies have researched the effect of diversity to the performance of multinational companies, some of them encourage the development of diversity in multinational companies because they claim that the diversity of employee could encourage the internationalization of the companies and improve the outcomes of those companies. Meanwhile, many experts doubt that the effects of diversity of employees are not clear, and the potential negative impacts of diversity of the employees could happen in offices and daily management. In business and management area, the impacts of diversity of employees need to be further explored.

To develop deeper understand to the impacts of the diversity of the employees to the outcomes of a group, I divided the diversity to two major parts, the human capital diversity of employees and the biological-demographical diversity of the employees. I will use the Critical Appraisal Topic (CAT) assessment to evaluate the positive and negative impacts from these two types diversity. And my CAT report is focusing on answering a question:

What is known in scholar literature about the impact of human capital diversity and biological-demographical diversity of the employees on the performance of the organizations?

Moreover, my Critical Appraisal Topic assessment will not focus on specific area or organizations due to the diversity of employees is the main stream in the global human resource management area and almost all the multinational companies or institutions are facing the same challenge no matter retailing organizations or medical corporations or engineering companies, this CAT provides the common suggestions to them: Is the diversity of employees beneficial for these organizations and What kind of diversity will be positive and what kind of diversity will be negative?

· PICOC

· Population: Employees in organizations

· Intervention: The human capital diversity of employees

· Comparison: The biological-demographical diversity of employees

· Outcome: Figure out the how the two types diversity will impact the performance of multinational companies or groups.

· Context: Multinational companies or international groups in the international human resource market

· Search strategies:

· Anu Super search database were searched using the keywords/terms such as “employee diversity *” Global human resource management”, “meta-analysis”, “organizational outcomes”. The search yielded over 80000 studies which published in peer-reviewed journals, journals articles. and the filters behind will be applied during the search:

· Searching for the title and abstract

· Scholarly peer-reviewed

· Journal articles

· Published date from 2001 – 2018

· Only English studies will be reviewed

· 6. Full text online

· Selection of studies:

· I have strictly followed the inclusion criteria and the search strategy to make sure that my strategies are relevant to the impacts of the two kinds of diversity of employees on the performance of organizations. And 12 studies are selected to identify the relationship between the two type of employee diversity and the organizational performance.

· Most of my chosen studies are based on cross-sectional and primary research studies also with one meta-analysis study in the study group.

· I have carefully chosen the studies which research on the relationship between the diversity of employees and the outcomes of firms/companies instead of small group or individuals.

· I have checked that these studies based on actual firms not fictitious organizations.

· I carefully follow the specific requirements in inclusion criteria.

Set

Search

Database

Results

S1

ab(employee diversity) and ti(employee diversity) and ab(organizational performance)

ANU Super Search

9

S2

ab(human capital diversity) and ti(employee diversity) and ab(organizational performance)

ANU Super Search

1

S3

ab(biological and demographical diversity) and ti(employee diversity) and ab(organizational performance)

ANU Super Search

0

S4

ab(employee diversity) and ti(meta-analysis) and ab(organizational performance)

ANU Super Search

2

Data extraction

AUTHOR & YEAR

Design

Effect Size

Main Findings

Weakness

Level & Trust

worthiness

Ozgen Peters, Niebuhr, Nijkamp & Poot

2014

Cross-sectional / Primary Research

494 (Large)

Cultural diversity could lead to better organizational performance.

The uncertain relationship between immigration diversity in organizations and the performance of organizations.

None

B

Sanchez, Vinces & Guillen, 2018

Cross-sectional / Primary Research

902(large)

Positive effect of cultural/human capital diversity on organizational performance.

Positive effect of demographical/ biological diversity on organizational performance.

The research and just focus on one region the Brazi which could not represent the common impacts globally.

D

Garib, 2013

Cross-sectional/ primary research

NA

Apparently positive effect of hu diversity on organizational performance

Very Small positive effect of demographical like gender and sex diversity on organizational performance

The research only covers one country Holland.

D

Ostergaard, Timmermans & Kristinsson,

2010

Cross-sectional/ Primary Research

1684(large)

Gender diversity of employees lead to better organizational performance.

The age diversity of employees lead to worse organizational performance.

The educational diversity leads to better creativity and innovation and organizational Performance.

This evidence only researcher the major department or plants of the firms.

And the measurement of organizational performance is based on the innovation of these firms.

D

Horwitz & Horwitz,

2007

Meta-analysis

78

Without obvious correlation between biological-demographical diversity on organizational performance.

None

B

Critical Appraisal:

Through the critical appraisal of four primary researches and one meta-analysis, the trust worthiness is not high but close to the moderate quality. And from the 5 studies above it could be concluded that the relationship between human capital diversity of employees / biological-demographical diversity of employees and the outcomes of the organizations is moderate no matter it is negative or positive. In addition, I did not set the control groups for the studies in the data extraction above due to the main target of this CAT report is figuring out the negative and positive relationship between the two types diversity of employees and the performance of the organizations , the accurate results for each study is not necessary for this CAT report.

Definition:

1. The concept diversity of employee represents that the company hires employees with different characteristics. And there are two major diversity the human capital diversity and the biological-demographical diversity. The human capital diversity includes educational background, family background working experience, professional expertise, social ranks etc. And the biological-demographical diversity includes the differences in gender, race or language.

2. The performance of multinational organizations normally includes external innovations, internal harmony, managerial abilities, problem solving ability and decision-making ability also healthy development of organizations and the profits from global operations.

Causal Mechanism:

The primary research and meta-analysis studies above in the data extraction demonstrate that the performance and outcomes of the multinational companies rely on the global context and the situations of these organizations. However, the human capital and biological-demographical diversity could deeply affect the organizations such as communication, negotiation, conflicts, promotions, problem solving and decision making, and all of these elements could decide the outcomes and performance of organizations.

In fact, one of the humanity for most of people is avoiding uncertainty and diversity because most of us prefer to communicate and corporate with people who are similar with us because when employees communicate and work with people have similar characteristics with them like similar educational background, similar social ranks and similar value or people have same gender, race or age with them. When people work with similar people, they tend to have higher communicative efficiency and less barrier, also they will feel comfortable when work with people who are easier to understand. Since most of us like staying in the comfort zone and lock ourselves in our own rooms.

On the other hand, there are uncertainty and risks hidden in the diversity, but when our partners who have different educational background different working experience or different gender or race with us work with us, they may have wider vision and better knowledge base and managerial capabilities. Therefore, it is possible that when we work in a diverse group/organization, the diverse employees will improve the efficiency and outcomes of these organizations. The risks and uncertainty sometimes bring better outcomes to organizations.

Main Findings:

1. The Human capital diversity tend to have positive relationship with the performance of the multinational organizations. The human capital diversity contains the educational background, professional knowledge, expertise and working experience, these kinds of elements regarded as beneficial to improve the decision making and efficiency of the projects/programs from the studies in CAT report. (Level, D)

2. The Gender diversity ( the gender balance) and cultural diversity in companies could improve the managerial level, creativity and innovation in the multinational companies, then, they have more positive impacts to the organizational performance while age diversity tend to has negative impacts to the organizational performance. (Level, D)

3. Studies demonstrate that two types of diversity of employee will not have permanent impacts to the organizational performance, the impacts from same diversity could be different in different areas. In some developing countries both the human capital and biological-demographical diversity could have negative impacts to the outcomes of organizations. Meanwhile, in some developing countries like Holland and Germany, both the two types diversity could have positive impacts to the performance of the multinational companies. No findings illustrate that the two types diversity of employee will have same impacts to every context.(Level, B)

4. Although the gender diversity has positive impacts to the organizational performance, however, the other elements of biological tend to have very small positive or negative impacts to the performance of organizations. Therefore, in the two types of diversity, the human capital diversity is more beneficial and positive for organizational outcomes than the biological-demographical diversity.

Conclusion:

Through the research to the critical appraisal scholar literature on human capital and diversity’s impact on organizational performance, three main points could be provided. First of all, the impacts of a type of diversity might change when this kind of diversity was applied to another area/ country So, it is not appropriate to define that a kind of diversity will always be positive or beneficial to the organizational performance or outcomes. Secondly, in these two types of diversity of employees, the human capital diversity tends to have more positive impacts than biological-demographical diversity. The biological-demographical diversity might be more uncertain and less positive to the organizational performance. Third, the cultural and gender diversity could be more positive and beneficial to the organizational performance, and the age diversity is obviously negative to the organizational outcomes. To sum up, organizations could hire employees with more human capital diversity especially the gender and cultural diversity and less biological-demographical diversity especially the age diversity.

Limitations:

There are three major limitations in my CAT report. They are:

1. The trustworthiness of my studies is just close to moderate, they are high level and strongly reliable studies. Therefore, the accuracy and reliance of my research will be negatively influenced.

2. There are no control groups in my CAT which means my results could not be that accurate.

3. I divided different many kinds of diversity to two major diversity, the human capital diversity and the biological-demographical diversity, and the impacts to the organizational performance are based on these two types of major diversity. Some kinds of diversity may not be considered or ignored, and my result are two general which could be further explored.

Reference list

Garib, G. (2013). Leisure managers’ perceptions of employee diversity and impact of employee diversity. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 32, 254-260. doi:10.1016/j.ijhm.2012.07.002

Horwitz, S. K., & Horwitz, I. B. (2007). The effects of team diversity on team outcomes: A meta-analytic review of team demography. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications. doi:10.1177/0149206307308587

Triguero-Sánchez, R., Peña-Vinces, J., & Guillen, J. (2018). How to improve firm performance through employee diversity and organisational culture. Revista Brasileira de Gestão de Negócios, 20(3). Retrieved from:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jesus_Pena-Vinces/publication/326486344_How_to_improve_firm_performance_through_employee_diversity_and_organisational_culture/links/5b57052faca27217ffb74499/How-to-improve-firm-performance-through-employee-diversity-and-organisational-culture.pdf

Østergaard, C. R., Timmermans, B., & Kristinsson, K. (2011). Trrsp;arsrst879R 78

a esearch Policy, 40(3), 500-509. doi:10.1016/j.respol.2010.11.004

Ozgen, C., Peters, C., Niebuhr, A., Nijkamp, P., & Poot, H. J. (2014). Does cultural diversity of migrant employees affect innovation? International Migration Review, 48(S1), S377-S416. doi:10.1111/imre.12138