Managing Ethnically Diverse Bureaucrats: Evidence from the Nigerian Civil Service

We document the correlations between public service delivery, management practices, and the ethnic diversity of bureaucrats. We do so in the context of Nigeria, where ethnicity is a salient form of identity. We thus expand the empirical management literature highlighting bene...cial e¤ects of workplace diversity, that has focused on private sector ...rms operating in high income settings. Our analysis combines three data sources: (i) independent engineering assessments of completion rates for 4700 public sector projects; (ii) a survey eliciting management practices in the 63 civil service organizations responsible for these projects, following the approach of Bloom and Van Reenen [2007]; (iii) a survey to bureaucrats eliciting their ethnic identities. Management practices and ethnic diversity in organizations signi...cantly impact public service delivery: a one standard deviation increase in good management for bureaucrats corresponds to 21% higher completion rates; a one standard deviation increase in the ethnic diversity of bureaucrats corresponds to 14% higher completion rates. The two organizational characteristics are found to be substitutes for one another. In line with the management literature, this evidence highlights a potentially positive side of ethnic diversity in public sector organizations, in the context of Sub Saharan Africa.