Does Diversity Help Baseball Teams Win Games? Rutgers-Camden Management Scholar Seeks an Answer

For Immediate Release

CAMDEN --  As Major League Baseball prepares for the World Series, a management professor at the Rutgers School of Business–Camden is studying the composition of successful baseball teams and finding ways to apply home runs on the baseball diamond to grand slams in the business world.

According to Chester Spell,  an associate professor of human resource management at the Rutgers School of Business–Camden, truly successful teams are strengthened by demographic “faultlines.” The concept sounds counterintuitive, but the Rutgers–Camden researcher points out that “faultlines” – which split a group into relatively homogenous subgroups based on demographic attributes – actually serve to consolidate a team’s performance.

“Diversity within a group plays a role in improving the group’s performance and behavioral health,” explains Spell.  “Shared experiences among subgroups within a larger team promote better communication and collaboration.  Through changes in team composition, groups can enjoy positive changes in individual and group performance.”

Take, for example, star Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka’s choice to play with the Boston Red Sox.  The phenom pitcher reported that the role of another Japanese employee of the team, Masai Takahashi, was a key influence in Matsuzaka’s decision to join the Red Sox.  Later, Junichi Tazawa, another Japanese player, joined the team. Through the development of a demographic “faultline” within the Red Sox, the franchise attracted players from a diverse background, and strengthen the lineup.

Spell’s study examines 30 Major League Baseball teams.  The researcher notes that “management scholars regularly observe that the operation of a baseball team reflects many attributes of modern organizations.  Moreover, since team composition regularly changes in baseball, we are studying whether demographic diversity actually adds to the long-term stability of a group.”

The ongoing study seeks to explain how changes in demographic subgroups – within baseball teams and within other organizations – impact the behavior and performance of the overall squad.

“It seems that, under some conditions, diversity may be destructive,” notes Spell. “There are still reports of racial tensions on a few teams, but under other conditions, diversity can be helpful.  The example from the Red Sox and the number of Japanese players who have done well are good examples. One of our goals is to identify the conditions under which diversity might be helpful.”

Do World Series teams have strong faultlines? Spell is pursuing that very question.  “That's our second key question we hope to answer when we are done analyzing the data,” he says.

Spell regularly teaches undergraduate and MBA courses in Human Resource Management, Compensation, and Organizational Behavior at the Rutgers School of Business–Camden.

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