Diversity and team performance: A series of field experiments

This dissertation studies the impact of diversity on team performance using a series of field experiments in which teams start up and manage real companies under identical circumstances. Exogenous variation in - otherwise random - team composition is imposed by assigning individuals to teams based on their gender, ethnicity or cognitive ability. The setting of these field experiments closely resembles that of (business) management practices in the longer run where tasks are diverse and involve complex decision-making. Evidence from this kind of experiments potentially contributes to the effective composition of teams in organizations. The results of this dissertation demonstrate that diversity in gender, ethnicity and cognitive ability has substantial and non-monotonic effects on the performance of teams. Various underlying mechanisms are explored to explain why teams of distinct degrees of diversity perform differently.