This is called a hypothesis. It's a good hypothesis, but it's still just a hypothesis. There is no experimental evidence to support the hypothesis that excludes external variables. There are only observational studies that do not exclude or control for external hidden variables, such as "good management," "good marketing," etc. It might "make sense" and even feel true, but that doesn't make it true. The closest a study has come to making this claim is a study led by Thomas Kochan in 2003 that studied retail sales workers. Still, this study found few positive or negative direct effects on performance, while the study found that stores with effective diversity training programs showed improved sales performance. This suggests a potential link between DEI initiatives and financial outcomes. Still, it stopped short of directly attributing increased profits to the training alone because the researchers could not exclude external variables. Other studies, such as the one by Harter, Schmidt, and Hayes in 2002, showed a relationship between employee engagement and financial performance, which might be enhanced with DEI practices. However, the result was primarily attributed to increased employee engagement outside the DEI programs. A study in 2009 by Nishii and Mayer found that inclusive leadership practices led to higher innovation within teams. Still, this result was seen regardless of the presence of the DEI programs. On the other hand, numerous studies show DEI programs are, at best, ineffectual (Kulik and Roberson 2008), reinforce stereotypes (Dobbin and Kalev 2016), or even decrease team cohesion (Ely and Thomas 2001) Of course, just like the studies that support DEI programs these are all observational studies.