August 22, 2018. Mauritius – CEIBS Professor of Finance and Accounting Oliver Rui is one of the winners of the Best Papers Award, announced during the 2018 World Finance Conference (WFC). His paper entitled “Analyst Team Diversity and Analyst Performance” received the Honourable Mention Prize from among more than 200 papers presented during the three-day event held in Mauritius from July 25-27. The prize is awarded on the basis of originality, technical content, relevance of contribution, organisation, and clarity as determined by members of the WFC’s Scientific and Program Committee.

The paper, which Prof. Rui co-authored along with He Xianjie (Shanghai University of Finance and Economics) and Wu Shan (Nanjing University), uses stock market forecasting in order to explore how diversity affects team performance. In conducting their research, they uncovered a number of rather intriguing results, some of which Prof. Rui was able to present during the WFC gathering. The team determined, for example, that diversity is not without its drawbacks, especially when it comes to both the efficiency and cohesion of groups.

“Our findings indicate that it takes more time for a diversified team to reach an agreement,” Prof. Rui explains. “In addition, homogenous groups appear to enjoy the benefit of lower communication costs and improved relationships between team members.” These findings are surprising as a lot of previous work has trumpeted the value of diversity within teams.

Prof. Rui’s team did, however, arrive at a number of conclusions which would appear to support prior research in other related areas.

“Our research found that cognitive—more so than demographic—diversity in general has a positive association with team forecast accuracy,” Prof. Rui explains. “This is consistent with the idea that people with different knowledge sets may pay attention to different information and thus achieve better performance than a single individual.”

Prof. Rui’s role at CEIBS also includes being the Zhongkun Group Chair in Finance, Director of the Ph.D. Programme, Director of CEIBS Centre for Wealth Management, Co-Director of CEIBS Centre for Family Heritage, as well as Programme Director of Family Office Diploma Programme. He is the author of two books and has published nearly 100 papers on a variety of topics including economics, finance, accounting, and management. His insight and expertise on finance matters has also made him a highly sought-after source for international media.

Learn more about Prof. Rui’s academic background, teaching interests, and other work from his CEIBS faculty profile here.