Abstract
This paper implements a field experiment in India to understand whether the effects of religious diversity on productivity and attitudes depend on a firm's production technology. I randomly assigned Hindu and Muslim workers at a manufacturing plant in West Bengal to religiously mixed or homogeneous teams. Production tasks are categorized as high- or low-dependency based on the degree of continuous coordination required for production. I find that mixed teams are less productive than homogeneous teams in high-dependency tasks, but this effect attenuates completely in four months. In low-dependency tasks, diversity does not affect productivity. Despite lowering short-run productivity, mixing improves out-group attitudes for Hindu workers in high-dependency tasks - but there are little or no effects in low-dependency tasks. Overall, this pattern of results suggests that technology that incentivizes individuals to learn to work together is important in overcoming existing intergroup differences - and leads to improved relations and team performance.