IMPACTS OF DIVERSITY ON COMMUNICATION EFFECTIVENESS - A PROPOSED TYPOLOGY

What impact will a greater increase in the diversity level of an organ ization's work force have on its productivity? Practicing managers' de sire to have this question answered has been the stimulus for much of the diversity-related research currently in print. However, the narrow focus on providing an answer to this particular question appears to h ave diverted researchers' attention away from a number of perhaps more fundamental issues. A major issue that has been neglected in previous research studies is the impact that greater increases in work-force d iversity might have on communication processes within organizations-sp ecifically, communication processes that are associated with organizat ional productivity. As a contribution toward helping to fill in this r esearch gap, this article proposes a typology of impacts that greater increases in work-force diversity might have on communication effectiv eness in organizations.