Cultural Diversity in Management, Firm Performance, and the Moderating Role of Entrepreneurial Orientation Dimensions.

Extending previous theorizing on cultural diversity’s organizational effects by integrating value-in-diversity and social identity perspectives with the framework of Blau’s (1977) theory of heterogeneity, we hypothesized curvilinear relationships between racial and gender diversity in management and firm performance. We evaluated relationships within the context of firm-level entrepreneurial orientation. Our empirical study indicated complex relationships among study variables. It revealed that innovativeness positively and risk taking negatively moderated nonlinear relationship patterns for both racial and gender heterogeneity. Research and practical implications are discussed. In the United States, women hold more than 40 percent of the administrative and managerial jobs, and about 17 percent of “officials and managers” are racial minorities (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission EEOC, 2002). Despite these facts, there has been little research on the performance