Why do firms fail to engage diversity? A behavioral strategy perspective
File(s)Liu2021_diversity.pdf (895 KB)
Published version
Author(s)
Liu, Chengwei
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The persistent failure of organizations to engage diversity—to employ a diverse workforce and fully realize its potential—is puzzling, as it creates labor-market inefficiencies and untapped opportunities. Addressing this puzzle from a behavioral strategy as arbitrage perspective, this paper argues that attractive opportunities tend to be protected by strong behavioral and social limits to arbitrage. I outline four limits—cognizing, searching, reconfiguring, and legitimizing (CSRL)—that deter firms from sensing, seizing, integrating, and justifying valuable diversity. The case of Moneyball is used to illustrate how these CSRL limits prevented mispriced human resources from being arbitraged away sooner, with implications for engaging cognitive diversity that go beyond sports. This perspective describes why behavioral failures as arbitrage opportunities can persist and prescribes strategists, as contrarian theorists, a framework for formulating relevant behavioral and social problems to solve in order to search for and exploit these untapped opportunities.
Date Issued
2021-09
Date Acceptance
2020-10-08
Citation
Organization Science, 2021, 32 (5), pp.1193-1209
ISSN
1047-7039
Publisher
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
Start Page
1193
End Page
1209
Journal / Book Title
Organization Science
Volume
32
Issue
5
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2021, The Author(s) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You are free to download this work and share with others,
but cannot change in any way or use commercially without permission, and you must attribute
this work as “Organization Science. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). https://doi.org/10.1287/
orsc.2020.1425, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License: https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/."
but cannot change in any way or use commercially without permission, and you must attribute
this work as “Organization Science. Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). https://doi.org/10.1287/
orsc.2020.1425, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License: https://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/."
Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2020.1425
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2021-02-19