Conventional wisdom in the management literature holds that diversity is positively correlated with performance. Yet, the findings from the construction field indicate that this is not always the case. In an effort to study the interaction between diversity and performance in the construction industry, this paper presents the elements of a theoretical mathematical model to explore the relationship between diversity and knowledge sharing which is a precursor of performance. This model includes five dimensions of diversity: ethnicity, age, experience, language and education. At the heart of the mathematical model is a fuzzy based system that generates the probability of knowledge sharing among members with different demographic attributes. The presented fuzzy system will, in future work, become the foundation of an agent based model used to study the impact of worker interactions on productivity.
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