Because I am generally interested in issues of workplace diversity, the scholarly research article I located, that was of greatest interest to me, was called Recent research on team and organizational diversity: SWOT analysis and implications (Journal of Management 29(6), pp. 801-830). This was a qualitative (Lincoln & Denzin, 2004) research study, published in the Journal of Management in 2003. I also found two other, in some ways similar, articles on workplace diversity, called (1) Diversity and productivity in production teams (Hamilton, Mickerson, Jackson & Olin, May 2004); and (2) Top management team diversity, group process, and strategic consensus (Knight, Pearce, Smith, Olian, Smith, Sims, & Flood,1999), but of the three articles, the first, Recent research on team and organizational diversity: SWOT analysis and implications (2004), seemed the most interesting, and also seemed to have broadest possible implications for future study and practice.

             To define the business research of which this study consisted, and its purpose, the study looked at sixty-three previous studies on workplace diversity, and drew general conclusions about them for future research and practice. The 63 studies were all published between 1997 and 2002. The authors reviewed these earlier studies' assessments of effects of workplace diversity on teams and organizations. Within their assessments of these 63 studies, four key questions were considered by the authors: (1) Which personal attributes have diversity researchers studied in recent years?; (2) What has been learned about the consequences of diversity for teams and organizations?; (3) What has been learned about the role of context in shaping the effects of diversity?; and (4) How has research addressed the multi-level complexities inherent in the phenomenon of diversity? For each of these questions, the authors next considered strengths and weaknesses of recent research on diversity; identified potential opportunities for new research, and identified threats to continued advancement.