Do Differences Make a Difference? The Impact of Human Capital Diversity, Experience and Compensation on Firm Performance in Engineering Consulting

The paper investigates the relationship between human capital characteristics and firm performance in engineering consulting. Because general experience, firm-specific human capital and diversity carry specific costs and benefits we hypothesize curvilinear (taking inverted U-shapes) relations to firm performance. We find little effect of general experience and firm-specific human capital, but the findings give some support for the curvilinear relation between performance and human capital diversity.