Is diversity actually good for business?

It is a sacred mantra of the business circuit that diverse boards improve company performance. It has apparently been proven in multiple studies by the world’s leading companies such as McKinsey and BlackRock, as well as regulators like the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). The evidence is so irrefutable that one FTSE 350 chair raged that ‘There have been enough reports… statistics and… evidence-based research to stop talking about it and get on with it.’ Another viewed the evidence that diversity trumps any other attribute as so ironclad that he tells executive search firms, ‘I don’t want to see any men. I don’t care if they’re Jesus Christ. I don’t want to see them.’ 

But does the evidence really show that diversity is the key to business success, or is this a case of confirmation bias – accepting a claim uncritically just because we want it to be true? 

When you take off your blinkers and look at the evidence with a clear head, you can see the glaring errors in these widely touted diversity studies.