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Valantine, H. A., & Collins, F. S. (2015). National Institutes of Health addresses the science of diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 112(40), 12240–2. http://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1515612112

The US biomedical research workforce does not currently mirror the nation's population demographically, despite numerous attempts to increase diversity. This imbalance is limiting the promise of our biomedical enterprise for building knowledge and improving the nation's health. Beyond ensuring fairness in scientific workforce representation, recruiting and retaining a diverse set of minds and approaches is vital to harnessing the complete intellectual capital of the nation. The complexity inherent in diversifying the research workforce underscores the need for a rigorous scientific approach, consistent with the ways we address the challenges of science discovery and translation to human health. Herein, we identify four cross-cutting diversity challenges ripe for scientific exploration and opportunity: research evidence for diversity's impact on the quality and outputs of science; evidence-based approaches to recruitment and training; individual and institutional barriers to workforce diversity; and a national strategy for eliminating barriers to career transition, with scientifically based approaches for scaling and dissemination. Evidence-based data for each of these challenges should provide an integrated, stepwise approach to programs that enhance diversity rapidly within the biomedical research workforce.

Over the last decade research groups at London Business School – together with researchers across the world – have developed a deep understanding of how and why innovation occurs. We have identified various factors that make a difference. These factors include the style and competence of team leaders, the way in which team members behave and interact with each other, the quality and extent of relationships and networks that are built both within and across teams, and the actual composition of the teams. This research has also pointed to the crucial role played by the context of the team – both in terms of the practices and processes of the company, and indeed of the culture and norms. In this study, we broaden and deepen our understanding of innovation in teams by taking a closer look at what it means to be a team member, how team members behave with each other, and what impact this has on the team outcome. Their interest here is in gender. They are interested in the individual experience of both men and women in teams. 

Roberge, M.-É. (2013). A Multi-Level Conceptualization of Empathy to Explain How Diversity Increases Group Performance. International Journal of Business and Management, 8(3), p122. http://doi.org/10.5539/ijbm.v8n3p122

This paper focuses on affective empathy and the role it plays in explaining how diversity may increase group performance in organizations. It suggests that both individual-level empathy and group-level empathy are key mechanisms that explain how people in diverse groups may work harmoniously together and increase the overall group performance. Finally, the paper addresses the theoretical and practical implications of a multi-level conceptualization of empathy and it provides recommendations for future research.

This article analyzes the implementation of gender mainstreaming in the European Union through the study of ‘resistance’ to gender equality initiatives in the EU research policy. Contributing to feminist institutionalist theories, it identifies resistance to gender initiatives within the Directorate General Research and Innovation, showing that there have been obstacles to an effective implementation of gender mainstreaming in the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme (FP6). It is argued that the encountered resistances reveal tensions between the European Commission’s official mandate of mainstreaming gender equality into all policies and its actual implementation, which results in the evaporation of transformative gender equality goals. To operationalise the analysis, a typology of ‘resistances’ was developed that is briefly presented in the article.