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Series

Faculty Scholarship

Duke Law

Race discrimination

Business

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

A Difficult Conversation: Corporate Directors On Race And Gender, Kimberly D. Krawiec, John M. Conley, Lissa L. Broome Jan 2014

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 Jan 2013

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 …