CEHD CEHD CEHD CEHD

Diversity Substantially Impacts Athletic Department Performance

Results from a study in the Laboratory for Diversity in Sport at Texas A&M University show that staff diversity substantially impacts how well the athletic department performs.

Dr. George Cunningham, who serves as the Director of the Lab, merged results of the 2006-2007 US Sports Academy Director's Cup (announced on June 26, 2007) with the results from one of his previous studies, the 2006-2007 Diversity in Athletics Award, and examined the link between excellence in diversity and excellence in on-the-field performance. Specifically, Cunningham examined how a department's diversity strategy interacted with the racial composition of the departmental staff to predict the Director's Cup performance.

"Departments with a proactive diversity management strategy and a racially diverse workforce earned more points than any other department [mean points totaled 508.71]," Cunningham said. "These results show that diversity does make a difference.  Athletic departments that couple sound diversity management strategies with a racially divers workforce clearly outperform their peers."

"Supporting and embracing diversity in the workplace has many benefits, including those in the social, legal, and human resources realm," said Cunningham. "In addition, however, these findings point to the value diversity can bring to the workplace in terms of effectiveness gains. The findings are very encouraging."

For more information, please visit the Laboratory for Diversity in Sport at http://lds.tamu.edu.

Contact: George Cunningham at gbcunningham@hlkn.tamu.edu.

College Calendar