Strategic management of equality, diversity, and inclusion in organisations and its impact on team performance

Abstract

Since the advent of the internet and the subsequent development of online gaming, video games have had the capacity to connect people together in ways never previously imaginable. Despite being an industry with more has three billion players, it has largely gone unrecognised by diversity and inclusion practitioners and remains relatively unexplored. Despite its relative success, white males dominate both in terms of audience and video game developer demographics. Only 28% of the workforce is female, compared to 45% across all industries, with BAME groups equally underrepresented. The problem is exacerbated by newly released games that fail to appropriately address diversity issues, preventing them from attracting a diverse talent pool and reaching broader societal audiences. This study, concentrates on the British video game industry, extending previous research on diversity and inclusion management by investigating the extent to which strategic approaches are used to promote workforce diversity, examining the challenges, and providing a structured framework for dealing with them. This study also investigates the social, cultural, and environmental effects of team diversity (independent variable) and the factors that influence team performance (i.e., product quality, productivity, effectiveness, and ability to achieve the organisation's mission (dependent variable). The focus diversity dimensions studied in this research are gender, sexual orientation, age, ethnic origin, and level of education. The effects of creativity (mediator variable) and conflict (moderator variable) are also investigated. This thesis is based on a case study analysis conducted in a large company in the British video games industry. The research paradigm is critical realism, and the study draws on mixed methods, due to the exploratory and confirmatory aims of the research objectives and questions. The qualitative analysis is based on data gathered through personal observations, company sources, and 33 semi-structured interviews, with each interviewee contacted using snowball sampling. The quantitative analysis is based on empirical data gathered from a company-wide survey with a sample size of 147. Both analyses were triangulated to answer the research questions. This thesis extends the limitations of existing literature by presenting a six-step strategy for managing diversity, built on practices harvested from case study analysis. Similarly, providing evidence that team performance is enhanced through fostering creativity and effectively managing conflict.