Race & Diversity

16 Results

 

Looking Up and Looking Out: Career Mobility Effects of Demographic Similarity among Professionals

Kathleen L. McGinn and Katherine L. Milkman

While women and racial minorities have increasingly crossed the threshold into professional service organizations, the path to the top remains elusive. Why do inequalities persist? McGinn and Milkman study processes of cohesion, competition, and comparison by looking at career mobility in a single up-or-out professional service organization. Findings show that higher proportions of same-sex and same-race superiors enhanced the career mobility of junior professionals. On the flip side, however, higher proportions of same-sex or same-race peers increased the likelihood of women's and men's exit and generally decreased their chances of promotion. This research highlights how important it is to look at both cooperative and competitive effects of demographic similarity when trying to address the problem of persistent underrepresentation of women and minorities at the highest levels in organizations. Read More

Collaborating Across Cultures

Learning to collaborate creatively with people from other cultures is a vital skill in today's business environment, says professor Roy Y.J. Chua, whose research focuses on a key measure psychologists have dubbed "cultural metacognition." Open for comment; 24 Comments posted.

Finding the Right Jeremy Lin Storyline

New York Knicks sensation Jeremy Lin is confounding every stereotype we have about modern day basketball stars. Professor Lakshmi Ramarajan suggests that Lin's complex storylines can help us put our own prejudices in focus. Open for comment; 7 Comments posted.

The Case Against Racial Colorblindness

Research by Harvard Business School's Michael I. Norton and colleagues shows that attempting to overcome prejudice by ignoring race is an ineffective strategy that—in many cases—only serves to perpetuate bias. Open for comment; 23 Comments posted.

Taking the Fear out of Diversity Policies

Workplace policies regarding race, gender, and sexual orientation often are borne of studies that focus on the problem of discrimination—rather than on the benefits of a diverse workforce. HBS professors Lakshmi Ramarajan and David Thomas argue that focusing on the benefits of a diverse organization will lead to workplace policies that embrace diversity, instead of grudgingly accepting it or dancing around it. Open for comment; 20 Comments posted.

Reversing the Queue: Performance, Legitimacy, and Minority Hiring

Andrew Hill and David Thomas

While there has been a steady rise in the number of black executives in corporate America, the fact remains that white males have a persistent advantage in terms of access to managerial positions. This paper sets out to find out how a company's performance influences the hiring of minorities into management positions, and whether the presence of minorities in senior management positions affects the racial composition of the subordinate management team. Research, which focused on the corporate structure of the National Football League, was conducted by Harvard Business School doctoral candidate Andrew Hill and professor David Thomas. Read More

A Positive Approach to Studying Diversity in Organizations

Lakshmi Ramarajan and David Thomas

Considering that the topic of workplace diversity often garners unhappy discussions of prejudice, isolation, and conflict, it's not surprising that many researchers avoid the topic altogether. Only 5 percent of articles published in management journals from 2000-2008 included race or gender in their keywords. In this paper, Harvard Business School professors Lakshmi Ramarajan and David Thomas propose a positive approach to studying diversity, with hopes that this will lead managers to feel more positive about adopting diversity policies in the workplace. Read More

Will I Stay or Will I Go? Cooperative and Competitive Effects of Workgroup Sex and Race Composition on Turnover

Kathleen L. McGinn and Katherine L. Milkman

Inequalities in the senior ranks by sex and race remain rampant in up-or-out knowledge organizations such as consulting firms, law firms, and universities. HBS professor Kathleen L. McGinn and Wharton School professor Katherine L. Milkman focus on patterns of voluntary and involuntary turnover over six years in one such organization to untangle the multiple ways in which social identity influences career mobility. Predicting that higher proportions of demographically similar supervisors will reduce the likelihood of subordinate turnover, while higher proportions of demographically similar peers will increase the likelihood of turnover, the researchers find evidence of the hypothesized effects. They suggest that integrating research about social cohesion and social comparison enhances understanding of racial and gender inequality within organizations and facilitates organizations' ability to reduce that inequality. Read More

The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms and US Ethnic Invention

William R. Kerr and William F. Lincoln

The H-1B visa program governs most admissions of temporary immigrants into the U.S. for employment in patenting-related fields. This program has become a point of significant controversy in the public debate over immigration, with proponents and detractors at odds over how important H-1B admission levels are for U.S. technology advancement and whether native U.S. workers are being displaced by immigrants. In this study, Kerr and Lincoln quantify the impact of changes in H-1B admission levels on the pace and character of U.S. invention over the 1995-2006 period. Read More

The Ethnic Composition of U.S. Inventors

William R. Kerr

The contributions of immigrants to U.S. technology formation are staggering. While the foreign-born account for just over 10 percent of the U.S. working population, they represent 25 percent of the U.S. science and engineering workforce and nearly 50 percent of those with doctorates. Even looking within the Ph.D. level, ethnic researchers make an exceptional contribution to science as measured by Nobel Prizes, election to the National Academy of Sciences, patent citation counts, and so on. The magnitude of these ethnic contributions raises many research and policy questions: 4 examples are debates regarding the appropriate quota for H1-B temporary visas, the possible crowding out of native students from the science and engineering fields, the brain-drain or brain-circulation effect on sending countries, and the future prospects for U.S. technology leadership. This paper describes a new approach for quantifying the ethnic composition of U.S. inventors with previously unavailable detail. Read More

The Persuasive Appeal of Stigma

Michael I. Norton, Elizabeth W. Dunn, Dana R. Carney, and Dan Ariely

Are minority groups more persuasive when their conversations with majority groups are conducted face-to-face? Interracial interactions are among the most perilous social occasions in contemporary America, full of opportunities for things to go awry. People in stigmatized groups, for instance, may worry that members of majority groups hold prejudiced attitudes that can lead to discriminatory or offensive behavior. Members of majority groups, for their part, may fear coming across as biased or racist. While psychology has traditionally explored the damaging effects of such interactions on social exchange, new findings contribute to the growing recognition that stigma may be a two-sided construct, marked with a host of costs but occasional benefits. This study demonstrates the persuasive power of stigmatized individuals and shows how self-presentational concerns may change attitudes. Read More

Unfinished Business: The Impact of Race on Understanding Mentoring Relationships

Stacy Blake-Beard, Audrey Murrell, and David Thomas

Race is a critical component of relationships in organizations, particularly in the United States and, due to shifting demographics, particularly for the future. As a socially embedded phenomenon, race also provides a lens for research on mentoring. This paper discusses why race and mentoring are important, how race has been studied or omitted in research to date, and what is known about the intersection of mentoring and race in organizations. The authors then discuss their own model, which aims to guide future research. Read More

Asian and American Leadership Styles: How Are They Unique?

Business leadership is at the core of Asian economic development, says HBS professor D. Quinn Mills. As he explained recently in Kuala Lumpur, the American and Asian leadership styles, while very different, also share important similarities. Read More

IBM Finds Profit in Diversity

Former CEO Lou Gerstner established a diversity initiative that embraced differences instead of ignoring them. In this Harvard Business Review excerpt, professor David A. Thomas describes why IBM made diversity a cornerstone strategy. Read More

Racial Diversity Pays Off

Diversity has been a buzzword in organizations for at least fifteen years. How much is really known about its effects on performance? HBS professors Robin Ely and David Thomas investigate. Read More

Building Communities as Well as Companies

Starting and sustaining a minority-owned business has never been easy. The challenges are even greater in today's tough economy. Successful entrepreneurs share their experiences. Read More