TY - JOUR

T1 - The Effects of Coworker Heterogeneity on Firm-Level Output: Assessing the Impacts of Cultural and Language Diversity in the National Hockey League

AU - Kahane, Leo

AU - Longley, Neil

AU - Simmons, Robert

PY - 2013/3

Y1 - 2013/3

N2 - The paper uses data from the National Hockey League (NHL) to consider the potential gains to firms from employing culturally-diverse work teams. It finds that the presence of foreign workers does increase firm-level performance – NHL teams that employed a higher proportion of European players performed better. However, the results also indicate that teams perform better when their European players come from the same country, rather than being spread across many European countries – when teams have players from a wide array of European countries, integration costs associated with language and cultural differences may start to override any gains from diversity.

AB - The paper uses data from the National Hockey League (NHL) to consider the potential gains to firms from employing culturally-diverse work teams. It finds that the presence of foreign workers does increase firm-level performance – NHL teams that employed a higher proportion of European players performed better. However, the results also indicate that teams perform better when their European players come from the same country, rather than being spread across many European countries – when teams have players from a wide array of European countries, integration costs associated with language and cultural differences may start to override any gains from diversity.

U2 - 10.1162/REST_a_00221

DO - 10.1162/REST_a_00221

M3 - Journal article

VL - 95

SP - 302

EP - 314

JO - The Review of Economics and Statistics

JF - The Review of Economics and Statistics

SN - 0034-6535

IS - 1

ER -