Performance, Diversity And National Identity Evidence From Association Football

The increasing national diversity of coworkers has no consensus on its impact on performance. Using a team's predominant nationality as a proxy for national diversity and national identity, there is robust evidence that it affects team and individual performance. Detailed worker‐level data from a highly globalized industry, association football, show a nonlinear relationship between performance and the predominant nationality of a team's roster. As the number of members from the predominant nationality increases, performance declines. However, beyond a threshold level, performance rises. It follows that performance benefits from national diversity when the predominant nationality is small and from national identity when it is large. (JEL M14, Z21, Z22, J15)