This study examines team diversity and performance in the asset management industry. Focusing on political ideology as the source of both potential complementarities and conflict in a group, we find diverse teams perform better than homogeneous teams. The mechanism involves both improved decision-making due to more diverse perspectives and increased monitoring by heterogeneous team members. The benefits of ideological diversity are undone when political polarization is higher, consistent with increased intra-team conflict. In examining why less diverse teams are prevalent in asset management, we find entrenched managers prefer homogeneous teams, and the local labor market supply of ideologically diverse managers is constrained.

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Researchers: Richard B. Evans (University of Virginia), Melissa Prado (Nova SBE), Antonio Rizzo (Nova SBE), Rafael Zambrana (University of Notre Dame)

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