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There exists an entire consulting industry that performs research on the benefits of DEI training, the benefits of a more diverse workforce, the success of organizations which have more women/LGBT people in leadership positions, etc. Here is the consulting company Accenture's summary of the benefits of DEI to companies and organizations that adopt their practices.
I am of the belief that it is people's knowledge, experience and competence that determines whether or not an organization will be successful in its goals. It seems extremely unlikely to me that any problem corporations are interested in solving becomes easier the more members of your project team possess a uterus. Likewise, it seems unlikely your organization will gain magical insight into any real problem of interest by virtue hand-selecting team members whose ancestors have a specific continent of origin. And I have a hard time believing there is a benefit to adding more members of your team who are sexually aroused by humans who share their same sex organs (or adding members of your team who wish to change their sex organs via surgery or chemical sterization).
My priors are stacked so incredibly hard against studies which demonstrate that there is actually a benefit to structuring teams based on hand-selecting people who are LGBT, people from Africa, or adding more women. Indeed, it feels like if you lower qualifications to hire people from these groups, it can only result in organizations which are less qualified.
I'm wondering how it is possible that these consulting companies succeed in designing studies that show the opposite of (what I believe to be) reality. Is it all publication bias and p-hacking? My intuition says that it is. But there are some pretty powerful-looking studies that seem to be hard to explain via that explanation alone. Looking at an example of one of the studies done by McKinsey in the above link:
What is the plausible mechanism behind which research that shows these kind of results are created? Are they measuring something that is real (i.e. does a more diverse workforce actually make companies more money)? Or are the brilliant people at McKinsey meticulously hand-selecting the companies to design studies which will show the opposite of reality?
This is spurious reasoning and it's an argument that requires inferring causation based on correlation alone. Accenture tries to protect themselves from this criticism by employing motte-and-bailey, stating "it is important to note that research can only establish correlations, not causations, between the two" while very clearly attempting to push the reader towards the conclusion that diversity is good for companies. Even if the studies they're seeing aren't fucked with and there isn't a massive file drawer effect going on (and I would probably wager there is) there are plenty of ways a positive correlation between performance and diversity could be seen even if the promotion of diversity has a negative effect.
For example, it's possible that the companies that already have a large advantage can afford to implement bullshit like diversity initiatives. They can make all sorts of profitability-hurting decisions without actually impacting their position relative to other companies all too much, whereas other companies not in the same position would get selected out if they did that. One of the big examples of a hegemonic company caving to internal pressures and going nuts on the DEI shit is Disney. Its position is so strong that it can do such things like incessantly arrange internal DEI initiatives (one of which they literally got Ibram X. Kendi in for), and take strong public stands on controversial legislation which immensely hurts their public image but in the grand scheme of things doesn't make too large of a dent. Additionally, if you wanted to pressure companies to endorse your social goals you would probably mostly target dominant players since they have the most clout to push the agenda through. So the more successful a company is, the more attempts at ideological capture it will be subject to.
All this then becomes a self-reinforcing cycle. For instance, if many large institutional investors become "woke" and attempt to use their influence as a shareholder to remodel the internal leadership of the companies they invest in to be more diverse, this is going to strengthen that relationship even further. This is, in fact, exactly what the world's largest asset manager is doing. "According to BlackRock, insufficient board gender diversity was the main reason for voting against a director in the Americas region, where it voted against 1,554 directors at 975 companies - or 61% of the votes that the firm cast against directors in the region - for board gender diversity-related reasons." This creates a situation where companies that are getting funding (which would also be the companies with the most promising prospects) are the companies that are facing most pressure to be woke.
There are many more plausible explanations you could add that don’t amount to “diversity is good for your bottom line” (some of which have already been covered below, such as urban-rural divides possibly affecting the results). In short, even if the relationship detailed here is real I would say it is very premature to come to the conclusion that this means diversity is beneficial. Rather, it is far more likely that profitability creates the conditions that lead to DEI and not the other way around.
EDIT: added more
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