Alex Edmans sul suo blog Maycontainlies critica punto per punto i risultati di uno studio pubblicato dalla società di investimento Blackrock, sugli effetti positivi delle politiche di inclusione di genere nelle compagnie. Secondo Edmans, lo studio sarebbe troppo debole e affetto da bias per mostrare conclusioni valide:

The purpose of this post is to provide a review to help readers understand what they can take away from the study. Unfortunately, the answer is: almost nothing. The study makes fundamental errors, such as using dubious measures of financial performance (and switching between them, perhaps cherry-picking the ones that work), using dubious measures of gender diversity (and switching between them), and omitting basic controls. I will go through its main claims in turn.

Non è la prima volta che l’autore critica studi del genere che, nonostante mostrino grossolani errori metodologici, vengono spesso citati per sostenere i benefici economici delle politiche di inclusione. Edmans ricava da questo due conseguenze. Da un lato, probabilmente bisogna adottare definizioni diverse e più complesse di diversità, che non considerino solo il peso delle varie categorie demografiche nell’organigramma delle aziende, ma quanto diversi modi di pensare siano accettati all’interno di un’azienda.

There may well be a business case for diversity, but existing studies haven’t found one due to blunt classifications based on only gender and ethnicity. This is a very narrow measure of true cognitive diversity, so these results have no implications for the value of diversity of thought.

Moreover, what matters isn’t just to recruit people with a broad set of characteristics (be they gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic, regional, or experiential background) but making them feel valued and encouraging to contribute their diverse perspectives. This is why most initiatives stress the importance of diversity and inclusion. Not only do crude measures such as ethnicity statistics ignore the myriad of other components of diversity, but they completely fail to capture inclusion.

Dall’altro lato, siamo probabilmente sviati da un bias che ci porta a identificare vantaggi economici in comportamenti che riteniamo eticamente migliori. Tuttavia, questo non ci deve fare ignorare gli errori di metodo di questi studi, che non dimostrano affatto quello che sostengono. Si può auspicare una maggiore diversità nelle aziende anche senza avere la prova che essa porti a maggiori guadagni.

The misrepresentation of the business case for diversity is particularly disappointing since it may be that no business case is needed at all. Even without a business case for diversity, there are strong moral and ethical cases. Some people argue that you should choose the best person for the job, regardless of characteristics. However, others believe that, due to systemic and chronic discrimination against minorities, companies have a role to play in levelling up by actively recruiting under-represented groups. Perhaps doing so might not maximise profits, but many shareholders and stakeholders are willing to accept that trade-off — just as consumers buy organic food, despite its greater cost, due to non-financial considerations. (…) Making more money is not the only reason to pursue an initiative.