South African Industry and Geographic Dynamics Perspective on the Link Between Employee Diversity Attributes and Employee Productivity

Abstract

This study is part of an ongoing research project on various aspects of employee productivity in the South African workplace. The aim of the article is to measure the industry and geographic dynamics of the impact of different employee diversity attributes on productivity as no South African econometrically focused publications on this particular topic exist. I deemed it important to close this gap in the employee productivity literature. I applied an employee real remuneration model with a dissimilarity index vector and an industry dynamics vector to estimate the spillover effects of employee productivity for different employee diversity attributes. To validate the robustness of the estimates of the employee real remuneration model, estimations of the fixed-effect panel data were done for the full firm-based data sets. The estimation results indicated the same productivity pattern for the two industries in the three geographic areas. The productivity estimates suggest that the impacts of higher employee productivity spillovers (for all diversity subcategories) were more prominent for the area of the stronger gross geographic product. Limitations of this study that should be addressed are studies focused on the individual employee level and the productivity impact of the different levels of female remuneration gaps in the workplace. The estimation methodology applied in this study and the results thereof are intended to contribute to human resource policy debates on the impact of employee diversity attributes on employee productivity across industries and geographic areas in a diverse workplace.