Law Commons^™

Equality Metrics, Veronica Root Martinez, Gina-Gail S. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

This time is different. This time the death of another Black man at the hands of white police officers prompted calls for change not only within police departments, but across all aspects of American life. Those calls for change resulted in significant displays of support for the Black Lives Matter movement and interest in how to eliminate systemic racism and promote racial diversity and justice within one’s daily life and workplace. For the most part, corporations were quick to publicly align themselves with the movement. When carefully examined, however, many of the statements issued by corporations in support of the …

A Difficult Conversation: Corporate Directors On Race And Gender, Kimberly D. Krawiec, John M. Conley, Lissa L. Broome

Faculty Scholarship

This symposium essay summarizes our ongoing ethnographic research on corporate board diversity, discussing the central tension in our respondents’ views – their overwhelmingly enthusiastic support of board diversity coupled with an inability to articulate coherent accounts of board diversity benefits that might rationalize that enthusiasm. As their reactions make clear, frank dialogue about race and gender – even a seemingly benign discussion of diversity’s benefits – can be a difficult conversation.

The Danger Of Difference: Tensions In Directors’ View Of Corporate Board Diversity, Kimberly D. Krawiec, John M. Conley, Lissa L. Broome

Faculty Scholarship

This Article describes the results from fifty-seven interviews with corporate directors and a limited number of other persons (including institutional investors, search firm personnel, and the like) regarding their views on corporate board diversity. It highlights numerous tensions in these views. Most directors, for instance, proclaim that diverse boards are good, but very few directors can articulate their reasons for this belief. Some directors have suggested that diverse boards work better than non-diverse boards, but gave relatively few concrete examples of specific instances where a female or minority board member made a special contribution related to that director’s race or …

Dangerous Categories: Narratives Of Corporate Board Diversity, Lissa Lamkin Broome, John M. Conley, Kimberly D. Krawiec

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, we report the results of a series of interviews with corporate directors about racial, ethnic, and gender diversity on corporate boards. On the one hand, our respondents were clear and nearly uniform in their statements that board diversity was an important goal worth pursuing. Yet when asked to provide examples or anecdotes illustrating why board diversity matters, many subjects acknowledged difficulty in illustrating theory with reference to practice.

This expressed reluctance to come to specific terms with general claims about the value of director diversity inspired our title phrase: dangerous categories. That is, while "diversity" evokes universal …

Showcasing: The Positive Spin, Katharine T. Bartlett

Faculty Scholarship

This Commentary outlines the positive case for showcasing diversity. Patrick Shin and Mitu Gulati criticize showcasing on the grounds that appointing women and minorities to board directorships is unreliable as a sign of true commitment to diversity and, further, that showcasing is detrimental to women and minorities because it treats them as objects or “prized trophies.” Drawing on social psychology, this Commentary highlights the mechanisms through which showcasing, despite the negative features emphasized by Shin and Gulati, also reinforces diversity values and strengthens the existing societal consensus in favor of diversity.

Showcasing Diversity, Mitu Gulati, Patrick S. Shin

Faculty Scholarship

Diversity initiatives are commonplace in today’s corporate America. Large and successful firms frequently tout their commitments to diversity, sometimes appointing women and racial minorities to highly visible posts, including seats on their boards of directors. Why would a profit-minded firm engage in such behavior? One frequently voiced explanation is that by creating such diversity, firms send out a positive signal about their attributes: a firm’s willingness to expend resources on diversity shows its commitment to workplace fairness and equality, which makes it more attractive to potential employees, customers and financiers. This claim has considerable surface appeal not only as an …