Chapter 4: Understanding Differences: Demography, Dissimilarity, Distance, and Dispersion as Diversity

Understanding how interpersonal differences operate in and on individuals, dyads, teams, and entire organizations is more than a vibrant area of management scholarship. It has become a full-fledged enterprise and perhaps even a research ecosystem. Likely over a thousand academic papers have been written about those differences (Triana, Gu et al., 2021). Entire academic journals are now devoted to improving our understanding of them (e.g., Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion; Journal of Diversity in Higher Education). Moreover, there is a continuing surge in diversity, equity, and inclusion (and sometimes belonging) or DEI(B) officers in the upper echelons of organizations, where chief diversity officers (CDOs) and other managerial leaders are trying to apply or at least accommodate that improved understanding in their firms (Birch, 2022).