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The Instrumental Case For Corporate Diversity, Naomi Cahn, June Carbone, Nancy Levit

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The moral case for diversity in businesses is compelling. The business case for diversity (that “diverse companies do better”) is mixed: studies in the business literature do not prove that simply adding diversity causes the improvement; instead, they posit that the improvement is likely to be “endogenous,” that is, the factors that encourage and sustain diversity, such as greater transparency, also improve financial performance. In this article, we make what we call “the instrumental case for diversity.” If the same factors that correlate with greater diversity also correlate with improved performance, then greater diversity can be a benchmark for better …