Link: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/sloth/HongPagePNAS.pdf

For many years now, corporations have been worshipping at the altar of "diversity", which is claimed to be A Good Thing. Most medium-to-large corporations have Diversity Policies, written in personnel handbooks and trumpeted on internal and external wesbites.
However, I have yet to work at a single corporation whose "Diversity policy" contained any direct links to, or quotes from, supporting research. In effect, most espoused diversity programs and policies are composed almost entirely of assertions and bizbuz shibboleths. Employees are supposed to embrace diversity because...well...diversity is A Good Thing, therefore we need more of it, so everybody run along and be more diverse.
Many larger corporations have diversity training offerings for employees. The ones I have seen I have found to be lacking. They tend to underplay some really obvious challenges to embracing diversity, such as the differing cultural norms that impact on decision-making and communication. The classic German style of corporate decision-making, which tends to require senior leadership approval, is often very different to the more free-wheeling style of American decision-making. However, what is also missing (more importantly) from the corporate diversity initiatives is any evidence as to why diversity is A Good Thing.
All of which brings me to this research paper by Lu Hong and Scott Page about the impact of diversity in large decision-making groups. Their most important finding is that you will not necessarily get the best decision outcome if you form a group of very clever people. As Hong and Page put it:

a team of randomly selected problem-solving agents outperforms a team composed of the best-performing agents

This is exactly the sort of research information that corporations should be pointing to, in order to inform and explain to employees and leaders why recognizing and planning to accomodate diversity is A Good Thing. The results of this research are explored a little in this blog entry.