한국생산성학회

As technological innovation is becoming important, securing intellectual diversity through the workforce diversity of research organizations is being emphasized. However, views on organizational diversity are still not reaching consensus, and existing evidence have limitations in terms of the empirical approach. Indeed, increasing number of studies which use quantile regression model show that the significance of the relationship between inputs and performance fundamentally differs across different levels of innovation performance. This study examines the relationship between firms’ workforce diversity and innovation performance, where we focus on the impact of gender diversity, age diversity, and education diversity. Methodologically, we conduct quantile regression model analysis to identify the effect of workforce diversity at various levels of innovation performance. The analysis in this study analyses 15,377 small and medium enterprises pooled from a 5-year period (2015– 2019). First, the results of the analysis shows that age diversity in research organizations has a positive relationship with innovation performance. Moreover, the positive effects of age diversity are more pronounced in relatively innovative organizations. This suggests that an organizational structure focused on a particular age group could rather undermine innovation. Organizational structure consisting of researchers of different ages is more positive for innovation performance. Second, we find that the positive effects of education diversity is observed only in organizations with high levels of innovation performance. This suggests that, as the positive effects of organizational diversity vary depending on the level of innovation performance, strategic decisions need to be made based on systematic diagnosis of the organization. Third, the results show that gender diversity is not necessarily related to innovation performance. It is reasonable to understand that the results of this study are due to the failure of the size of female R&D personnel in sample companies to reach the critical level where the effect of gender diversity is expressed. This study contributes to provide empirical evidence and implications at firm level, which has been relatively insufficient in the Korean context, through empirical research using survey data on small and medium-sized enterprises. In addition, our findings supplement the existing evidence by showing that the relationship between organizational diversity and innovation varies depending on the level of innovation performance through a quantile regression analysis.