By Gaël Gueguen
Basing itself on results for Tour de France cyclists, this study shows that cultural differences between team members have no effect on performance, an observation which may also be valid, under certain conditions, for the workplace, where of the issue of diversity remains a subject of ongoing debate.
To what extent can one transpose certain well-known management concepts (such as team work, strategy, rivalry, etc.) to a sport, e. g. cycling, so as to better understand how it works, and, by extension, further our understanding of company life? A first attempt to answer that has been made in a study by Gaël Gueguen (assessed particularly in relation to the number of nationalities involved), that questions whether the cultural diversity of teams taking part in the Tour de France has an impact on their results.
High level sport necessarily draws on the best resources, whether human or material. A high level team will seek out the best possible athletes for a given budget and thus attempt to recruit in the world market. In the case of the Tour de France, where the internationalization of teams has intensified in recent years, there was a notable reduction in the number of exclusively national teams entered by traditional ‘cycling’ countries such as France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands between 1987 et 2009, and a corresponding upswing in the number of teams comprising five and more different nationalities. This trend is continuing: in 2015 for the first time, a South African team included two Eritreans. This globalization of professional sport, however, is not without risk: cultural diversity can lead to coordination problems (problems of mutual understanding, for example, when different languages are spoken within a team) and have a negative effect on racers’ team spirit (differences in values or attitudes). This question is all the more crucial in cycling, a discipline where the vital need for sponsors and the international nature of competitions sometimes requires that foreign sportsmen be recruited simply because their countries are targeted by the sponsoring brands.
Should we take care to only include sportsmen of similar cultures in high level teams, or can we drop the idea? Wouldn’t a group focused on a specific task requiring rare complementary resources and coordination in competitive situations (exceptional climbers, sprinters, ace cyclists, highly versatile leaders and so on) be weakened by too wide a diversity among its members? It would appear not. Cultural diversity has no impact on sports results. Cycling team coaches can select a cyclist for his worth regardless of nationality without worrying about strong cultural differences. A possible explanation for this is that the professionalism of cyclists and their managers compensates for any coordination problems. . Indeed, since everyone’s efforts are supervised and synchronized by a chief coach, the roles of all team members are clearly defined, and regular training also helps transform each cyclist’s tasks into a perfectly mastered routine.
A company is rarely made up of homogeneous human resources as regards gender, age, experience, nationality, salary, etc. Do such significant differences increase the performance of work teams or not? Analysis of studies on diversity in the workplace show contradictory results. Diversity of team members can in some cases, for example, increase creativity and improve decision-making (since the clash of different opinions can spark good ideas). In others, however, it can negatively affect unity, trust and communication with a corresponding increase in tension and conflict. Can the observation that diversity and performance in cycling appear not to be related, help us to better understand what is happening in the corporate context? No doubt, but only under certain conditions. The Tour de France competition is somewhat particular which makes it hard to generalize, firstly in that members of professional cycling teams are extremely specialized, and then that, in this most important cycling event, teams of only the nine best riders among the thirty-odd under contract compete with each other and not the entire group (which would, however, be the case for a company).
Nonetheless, the methodology used can easily be transposed for a study of the impact of cultural diversity in teams of top managers on the performance of multinationals. This is of interest now that more and more firms are diversifying their executive boards as they expand internationally. In a multinational company such as L’Oréal, for example, the recruitment of managers from different countries is considered to be the principal factor behind successful product-launches in emerging countries. To limit a ‘Tower of Babel syndrome’*, multicultural teams are organized around a leader who, through experience in a variety of countries, knows how to handle inter-cultural tensions.**
* Coordination difficulties arising from different languages spoken within a team.** “L’Oréal Masters Multiculturalism” de Hae-Jung Hong et Yves Doz (Harvard Business Review, juin 2013).
The article “Diversité culturelle et performance des équipes sportives de haut niveau : le cas du Tour de France”, by Gaël Gueguen (Management International, 2011).
Although cycling is a somewhat particular activity, especially given that all its participants are highly specialized, the results of this research may be applied to the workplace provided that certain conditions are met. In groups comprising team members with clearly defined roles and specific tasks it may be stated that neither cultural diversity nor other differences such as gender, origin, age or education have a negative impact on collective performance. As with cycling, a specific team culture that transcends cultural boundaries may well arise.
I analyzed the results of 487 teams (4,375 racers) taking part in 23 Tours de France between 1987 and 2009 in order to determine whether cultural diversity harms performance. The study was based on several factors which allowed me to determine the cultural heterogeneity of the teams (based, primarily, on the number of countries represented). The aim was to compare the performance of teams of cyclists (their results) with the level of cultural diversity via a linear regression analysis intended to measure the strength of the relationship between a series of independent variables and one requiring explanation.
By Sylvain Bourjade
It is difficult to find experts that are both competent and independent. We show that in order to avoid conflicts of interest clouding expertise, the opinions and votes of each expert must be made public.
The Mediator scandal showed that conflicts of interest can have serious repercussions which may even lead to the deaths of several people. How can this be avoided while guaranteeing quality expert advice? Our research shows that it is possible to limit conflicts of interest by laying down rules for more transparency, but within limits.
It is always a challenge to find good experts: the most competent of them often have conflicts of interest. The researchers are partially financed by manufacturers with whom they sometimes are bound by consultancy contracts. This means that they may alter their opinion in order not to displease the manufacturers in question.
To minimize these conflicts of interest, without nevertheless having to rely on less qualified experts, we made a mathematical model of the behavior of the different parties. Experts are torn between three requirements: they may indeed have a biased opinion due to the conflict of interest, but they have at the same time to protect their reputation for impartiality so that they continue to be called upon as experts. Finally, even if they do have strong ties with industry they nevertheless continue to uphold certain principles. For example, they will refuse to approve a drug if they know it to be dangerous. We believe that experts’ choices are based on these three elements, namely loyalty to a customer, the need to protect their reputation for impartiality and the need to uphold their moral principles.
In France, in most of the consultative agencies such as the National agency for safety of medicines and health products (ANSM- l’Agence Nationale de Sécurité du Médicament et des Produits de Santé), which was called Afssaps until 2012, neither the experts’ reports nor their votes are divulged. If an expert wishes to have a potentially dangerous drug approved for marketing, his reputation is not affected, since nobody knows the role that he has played in this decision. Opacity thus tends to favor poor decisions which may endanger the health of consumers (by for instance approving the marketing of a potentially toxic drug) due to conflicts of interest.
Conversely, any transparency which is based on the reputation of experts, improves the expert advice. This is the case when their identity and the content of the report as well as their votes are known. In this case, the expert can no longer hide behind the argument “It was the committee that decided “. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is responsible for approving drugs for the American market, thus decided to improve its expert advice rules in order to limit conflicts of interest. The experts now pronounce their opinion simultaneously and the FDA reveals how each expert voted and publishes a detailed report of each meeting.
The first results of this theoretical study are in no way surprising as the positive effects of transparency are well-known. But our research has spotlighted more astonishing effects in which transparency, on the contrary, has a negative effect on the quality of decisions taken by expert committees, leading for instance to the approval of dangerous substances. This is because, when the expert’s conflicts of interest are well-known, everyone expects him to come out in favor of the manufacturers that finance him. This means there is no danger that his reports and votes will damage his reputation, since it is already “bad” due to the fact that he has revealed his links with these manufacturers.
Conversely, if he does not reveal his conflicts of interest, the expert will be inclined to vote against the manufacturers’ proposals in order to protect his reputation. Hence, according to the model we developed, the decisions will be improved if the reports and decisions of experts are divulged, but not necessarily their links with manufacturers. The rules should also encourage them to be honest: experts who have taken dangerous decisions should no longer be consulted. When decisions are to be taken, the way in which the consultative procedure is set up is crucial: it is particularly important to know each expert’s opinion and the way in which he voted.
It is still difficult to prove beyond doubt that the quality of expert advice is improved when transparency rules are applied. This cannot be observed since the quality of the decision can only be judged after a long time. To determine whether the new rules of the Food and Drug Administration are successful, we shall have to analyze the results in 10 years’ time. Nevertheless it is clear that more transparency will be helpful for French and European health and safety agencies, especially given the many health issues under discussion.
This is the case in particular for “endocrine disruptors”, compounds which interfere with our hormone system (including the notorious Bisphenol-A, which is now prohibited in food containers). Several scientific studies have proven the dangers of these chemical substances, but they are still widely used by manufacturers. The decisions of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concerning endocrine disruptors, have been severely criticized by scientists, who accuse EFSA of being too sensitive to lobbies and conflicts of interest and of having opaque expert-advice rules. Conversely, in climatology, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose reports are widely recognized by scientists, has particularly strong transparency rules.
By Sylvain Bourjade and the article “The roles of reputation and transparency on the behavior of biased experts” published with Bruno Jullien in the RAND Journal of Economics, Vol. 42, No. 3, 2011.
The model we have developed applies both to drug agencies and other fields in which expertise is required but risks being biased by conflicts of interest. This is the case for instance for anti-monopoly policy, for which experts have to decide whether to entities may merge even though the experts in question may have links with these entities or with their competitors. It is also the case for recommendations made by financial analysts. Even more surprising is that this work also applies to peer reviews of scientific work in which scientific articles are judged by other researchers whose names remain secret.
The work done by Bruno Jullien is a theoretical study in a field of mathematics called “game theory”. It involves modelling the behaviour of experts by estimating which elements predominated in their decisions. That depends on the short and long-term objectives of the experts. The study is not based on expertise data, since it is not available for the moment.