Abstract
In light of recent heightened attention to equity, justice, and race in society and organizations, in this commentary, we focus on the experiences of Black management faculty from job search to promotion and tenure. In formulating our ideas, we draw from diversity research conducted within and outside of the management field, including research on minority faculty, coupled with experiences of our own and of Black colleagues. We discuss race-based disparities in such areas as mentoring, social networks, job market experiences, classroom management and student evaluations of teaching, and service demands. We offer suggestions for allies to pursue equity, justice, and inclusion in management departments and business schools.
We cannot hold a torch to light another’s path without brightening our own.
The spring of 2020 was marked by several high-profile cases of excessive force by law enforcement that resulted in the deaths of unarmed Black people, and in the aftermath, significant societal attention has focused on the experiences of Black people in American society and its organizations. Many more people are now interested in understanding ways in which discrimination, marginalization, and exclusion significantly affect nearly all aspects of Black people’s lives, including job search and employment (Bell, 2020). However, some might question the extent to which these experiences apply to the academic world. After all, if racism is largely a by-product of ignorance, and academia is believed to represent the precipice of enlightenment, one would think the Black scholar experience would not be significantly different from those of their peers. However, a recent column in Science by an Ivy League social psychologist (Lewis, 2020) provides a detailed, but largely anecdotal, self-account of his experiences as a Black social scientist, which largely diverge from experiences of his White colleagues. In this commentary, we apply the lens of race to management faculty experiences in U.S. business schools to shed light on the Black experience. The authors represent Black assistant, associate, and full professors, with experience as administrators, doctoral advisors, endowed chairs, associate editors, special issue editors, and editorial board members. Along with relevant scholarship, we leverage our unique experiences to inform our ideas about race, specifically concerning Blackness in our chosen profession, and provide recommendations for change.
Conversations about race are often complicated and sensitive (Melaku & Beeman, 2020), reflecting individuals’ discomfort with the topic and with cross-race interactions (Avery, Richeson, Hebl, & Ambady, 2009). In management scholarship, very little attention is and has been paid to race (Nkomo, 1992; Nkomo, Bell, Roberts, Joshi, & Thatcher, 2019) despite the ways in which race was integral to the foundation of organizations in the United States (e.g., Roediger & Esch, 2012). Early efforts to focus on the status of racial minorities were subsumed by the more palatable term “diversity” (Nkomo et al., 2019). Nonetheless, disparities in Black people’s experiences in comparison to their referent peers are well documented. For example, Black professionals with similar qualifications, including selective educational credentials, are less likely to be hired, and when employed, they receive lower compensation and raises and are more likely to be laid off than similarly performing and tenured White, Asian, and typically Hispanic professionals (Avery, Volpone, & Holmes, 2018). Everyday life is no different, as Black people also have worse customer service outcomes, whether as medical patients, qualified loan applicants, or general consumers (Harris, Henderson, & Williams, 2005; Kelley, Moy, Stryer, Burstin, & Clancy, 2005; Reskin, 2012). These types of experiences are indicative of societal anti-Blackness (e.g., Ross, 2020), to which the academy is also subject (Bell, Berry, Leopold, & Nkomo, 2020). Indeed, Black faculty report more marginalization, less mentoring, higher turnover, lower work satisfaction, lower rates of tenure, and a lower likelihood of receiving external funding than their colleagues (Allen, Epps, Guillory, Suh, & Bonous-Hammarth, 2000; Ginther et al., 2011; Hooker & Johnson, 2011; Kaiser, 2011; Turner, Gonzalez, & Wood, 2008).
In the following sections, we consider these differences across the faculty life cycle and then provide recommendations for change. Although we acknowledge that others in the field may share similar experiences, given the current societal context and movement, we focus our attention on Black management scholars, often in comparison to their White colleagues. Additionally, while the individual experiences that we discuss are more universal than unique, given the American legacy of systematic marginalization and exclusion of Black people, these experiences are especially detrimental for Black scholars and their professional journeys.
The Job Market
Looking for a job, whether for the first time as a doctoral candidate or as a more experienced hire, often carries significant, unique challenges for Black scholars. Numerous studies show employment discrimination against Black applicants (Avery et al., 2018), and despite years of diversity efforts, results from a meta-analysis study over a 25-year period reveal no change in hiring discrimination against Black applicants (Quillian, Pager, Hexel, & Midtbøen, 2017). Although many universities have claimed to value diversity for an extended time period, in too many cases, little if any change in Black faculty representation is apparent. Black applicants are often advised that race may be an advantage on the job market but often find a very different reality awaiting them. Prior studies note common obstacles facing Black faculty when seeking employment, such as having an underresourced social network, being undervalued or disregarded by university employers, and especially important, having to carefully consider the university’s local racial climate (for safety and acceptance purposes) when pursuing and/or accepting a job (O’Meara, Culpepper, & Templeton, 2020; Pedulla & Pager, 2019).
Within academia and other fields, there is great importance placed upon whom you know, including your scholarly affiliations (Burt & Ronchi, 1994; Fernandez, Castilla, & Moore, 2000), to obtain access and advantage on the job market. The idea of the “old boys’ network” acting as a major facilitator to access into academia has been established for some time (Menges & Exum, 1983). Even from the commencement of the hiring process, when job market announcements are drafted (i.e., the signals sent from wording in the ad) and posted (i.e., choices of where to post), there can be positive or negative effects on the number of minority applications received (O’Meara et al., 2020; D. Smith, Turner, Osei-Kofi, & Richards, 2004). Some departments rely on a network-based search strategy that limits the dissemination of job announcements, resulting in a narrow applicant pool connected to a preferred set of colleagues. However, the use of network-based job market strategies (driven informally through one’s contacts) can lead to unequal distribution of knowledge of and about the job opening (Pedulla & Pager, 2019). This may negatively impact Black applicants because (a) while Black professionals equally depend on their social networks, they gain less utility out of each tie, and (b) there are significant differences in social resources and in network access because Black professionals often have more disadvantaged social positions (Ibarra, 1995; Lin, 2000; Pedulla & Pager, 2019; Petersen, Saporta, & Seidel, 2000). The importance of a job applicant’s networks becomes greater as candidates progress through the recruiting process, where connection via impressive recommendations, informal calls of network ties, and research connection with prestigious faculty become deciding factors in the rooms of selection committees, serving as signals amid uncertainty about a job applicant (Ortiz, 1998; Sagaria, 2002). However, Pedulla and Pager (2019: 996) found in their study that use of network strategies has lower returns for Black applicants such that “African American job seekers would need to utilize roughly twice as many network contacts as white job seekers to accrue the same labor market benefit.” Further, research has shown that those who are information holders about job opportunities often hesitate to share this information except within strong ties (Marin, 2012), which are rarer in cross-race connections between Black job seekers and their target organizations. The significant impact of social networks in hiring also extends to institutional affiliations. When analyzing placement data for nearly 19,000 faculty, Clauset, Arbesman, and Larremore (2015) found that hiring followed a prestige-based system that reinforced social inequalities. Reliance on personal connections and institutional affiliation can inhibit the hiring of underrepresented faculty who may not possess the preferred pedigree but have sufficient research productivity and awards.
Other issues that Black job seekers face are assumptions others make about the scarcity of Black applicants or their presumed abundance of job opportunities, which is juxtaposed against the common reality of having fewer options than others. Although many schools tout their interest in hiring minority faculty, often they propose that a pipeline problem exists, suggesting there are not enough available Black candidates or that they will be harder to get due to a bidding war. O’Meara et al. (2020) note that this is a misconception, citing several studies that find that most minority candidates have only a few job offers and that significant increases in pay did not emerge (see D. Smith et al., 2004; D. Smith, Wolf, & Busenberg, 1996; Springer, 2002; Trower & Chait, 2002). They suggest that this misconception may turn into a bias in which faculty discount the potential effectiveness of pursuing Black applicants.
Finally, and for many most importantly, Black applicants often experience a location burden that precludes particular institutions because of either the hiring committee’s assumptions concerning a Black applicant’s desire to live in racially diverse areas or the Black applicant’s own requirement to find a place to live that is safe and welcoming to Black people. Public health studies show attitudes and behaviors concerning race and ethnicity vary significantly by locale (Chae et al., 2015; Mesic et al., 2018). From the Great Migration in 1915 and the reliance on the Green Book for travel in the early 20th century to today, Black people (as do many others) often account for the possibility of race-based hostility through their mere presence in certain parts of the United States. Indeed, research shows Black faculty are often attracted to communities with higher minority populations (Kulis, Shaw, & Chong, 2000).
Nevertheless, assumptions made about location desirability can have mixed consequences for Black job candidates. Some institutions are keenly aware of their state reputation and history and often attempt to assure that all faculty will be welcome in their community. Indeed, a community’s diversity commitment and school’s diversity commitment can interact in ways to help ameliorate race-based concerns that faculty might have about the area (see Singh & Selvarajan, 2013). A Black candidate’s concern about hostile racial climates are legitimate (e.g., McKay, 2020). For example, the ratio of Black people to White people who die as a result of police force in one state in the United States is as high as 57:1 while an even ratio in others (see Mesic et al., 2018). Despite these differences, it is unacceptable for hiring committees to discourage application or preclude otherwise qualified applicants an opportunity to earn a position in their department because of these concerns.
Further, it must be pointed out that location is not a major determinant of the number of Black faculty at universities in the United States. One would expect fewer Black faculty in rural locales, where many fine institutions are located (e.g., Bloomington, College Station, and Urbana), than in urban locations with high Black populations, such as Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, or Washington, D.C. Urban business schools often have few, if any, Black faculty, as well. This is surprising, given these locations are often munificent with Black business professionals, yield a plentiful supply of Black college-bound students, and possess hospitable social climates that make them highly desirable places for Black faculty (McKay & Avery, 2006). Thus, an absence of Black faculty in population centers must convey something altogether different than location desirability issues.
Fitting In
Studies have shown that some of the most significant issues facing Black faculty in academia are marginalization, social isolation, lack of access to collaborative networks, and lack of mentoring (Grant, 2012; Jones, Hwang, & Bustamante, 2015). In a study of 765 faculty members, J. Smith and Calasanti (2005: 310) found that Black faculty, and especially Black women, have higher levels of social isolation, defined as “feelings of exclusion from supportive networks,” than did their White and Asian colleagues. In addition, institutional isolation, the belief one lacks the access to “organizational sources of power, prestige, support, and information critical to one’s success” and that one’s own professional attributes (position, training, etc.) will be discounted, was also a source of differences between Black and White faculty (J. Smith & Calasanti, 2005: 309). Black women rated their feelings of institutional isolation as significantly higher than did White and Asian American faculty. Similarly, evidence by Settles, Buchanan, and Dotson (2019) shows that underrepresented minority faculty report feeling isolated, ignored, and excluded, with 55% experiencing epistemic exclusion—the delegitimization of one’s research area and scholarly credentials—and 18% reporting feelings of social isolation. These are not small issues, as the strength of ties, social networks, isolation, exclusion, and marginality are related to job performance and turnover (e.g., De Clercq, Haq, & Azeem, 2019; O’Reilly, Robinson, Berdahl, & Banki, 2015; Ozcelik & Barsade, 2018; Renn, Allen, & Huning, 2013; Sparrowe, Linden, Wayne, & Kraimer, 2001). Within academia, relational and mentorship models of developing young faculty are common, and there is a positive relationship between faculty embeddedness and job performance (Van Emmerik & Sanders, 2004). Unfortunately, homophily often limits our efforts to bring out-group members into our networks (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001) so that all colleagues can benefit from similar opportunities for professional development.
Black faculty are often not part of the established in-group (e.g., Carton & Cummings, 2012) and may be the lone Black faculty in the department. Therefore, strong social relationships and mentorship are a crucial element in the success of Black faculty just as they are for Black executives (see A. Smith, Watkins, Ladge, & Carlton, 2019). As a member of the out-group, implicit professional norms may not be communicated adequately or in a timely fashion without the mentorship of more seasoned department faculty. This places Black faculty at risk of inadvertently violating these implicit norms.
Another aspect of fitting in that challenges Black faculty is navigating the tension between authenticity and the need for professional norm adherence in order to demonstrate assimilation. Some norms may be institutionally driven, such as the amount of time one must be present in the office, the manner of student and staff engagement, and the relationship of scholars across academic rank (i.e., doctoral student to full professor). However, other types of norms that are more culturally specific may not fit well for minority-group members, resulting in some degree of deviance from these norms, which is appraised negatively as an indicator of a larger problem of fit (Packer, 2008; Warren, 2003). For example, Black faculty are often challenged on their hair (especially women; see Griffin, Pifer, Humphrey, & Hazelwood, 2011) and the validity of their research (especially diversity scholars; Jones et al., 2015). Norm deviance may be more about identity maintenance and practical considerations and less about defiance (Packer, 2008). Nevertheless, for Black faculty, as members of the out-group, this may be viewed as a problem of cultural fit.
The Classroom Experience
Students as stakeholders present another set of unique challenges for Black faculty. Many departments heavily weight student evaluations of teaching (SETs) in judging professional teaching performance, even though it is well established SETs are very subjective, whereby 73% of the score is based on likability, appearance, personality, perceptions of beauty, and judgments of intelligence rather than on being effectively taught (e.g., Delucchi & Pelowski, 2000; Dziuban & Moskal, 2011; Hamermesh & Parker, 2005; Lazos, 2012). These judgments, which are influenced by social beliefs about race and ethnicity, present a particular challenge for Black faculty (Clayson & Sheffet, 2006; Lazos, 2012). Studies have found that White professors are uniformly viewed as the best teachers while Black professors, especially Black men, are often viewed as the worst professors (e.g., Hamermesh & Parker, 2005; McPherson & Jewell, 2007; Reid, 2010). The negativity toward Black faculty is often so pronounced that students are more prone to give Black faculty the lowest rating in all categories on SETs, “thereby lowering his or her average as much as possible” (Delgado & Bell, 1989: 355). Anecdotally, some Black business school faculty notice a remarkable improvement in SETs and associated outcomes (e.g., teaching awards, teaching grants) when they move from a homogenous, predominantly White campus to a more diverse institution, calling into question whether the scores are influenced more by faculty’s teaching or students’ cultural comfortableness.
Moreover, many Black faculty find students exhibit overt hostility toward them by challenging their competence, dismissing their authority, or devaluing their knowledge (Sue, Rivera, Watkins, Kim, Kim, & Williams, 2011). Sue et al. (2011) found that many Black faculty are subject to such incivilities as interruptions, challenges to proven ideas, and outright defiance in class. These behaviors may be tied to biases carried by students. These microaggressions were noted as particularly tricky for those faculty teaching classes that dealt with race, as students often struggled to see past their own experiences and advantages in life, leaving the faculty with the extraordinarily difficult task of managing students’ deep emotions and avoidance on the topic (Sue et al., 2011). This issue is so notorious that teaching antiracism has been called the “kiss of death” for its impact on one’s teaching evaluations and career (Nast, 1999: 105). In fact, many Black faculty reported feeling fearful of the impact that student biases might have on their SETs, an important aspect of tenure and promotion (Sue et al., 2011).
These raced behaviors may be tied to implicit or explicit biases carried by students. In fact, management scholars find that the prototype for leadership roles (such as professor) is often White, resulting in observers having a more negative view of Black leaders’ potential for success and effectiveness (Rosette, Leonardelli, & Phillips, 2008). Essentially, demographic dissimilarity to the prototypical views of who is a professor results in students having less favorable perceptions of Black professors because the violation of expectations leads to negative assumptions about competence (e.g., Aruguete, Slater, & Mwaikinda, 2017; Bavishi, Madera, & Hebl, 2010; Chávez & Mitchell, 2020). In fact, it has been found that students apply more rigorous criteria when judging the intellectual competence of Black faculty than they do with White faculty (Hendrix, 1997, 1998). As a result, Black faculty often go out of their way to prove competence in the face of hostile students because of the implicit requirement to actively do so (Biernat & Kobrynowicz, 1997; Miller & Chamberlain, 2000). While these faculty are often able to help students confront their inherent fears and biases concerning race (Sue & Constantine, 2007), at times a lack of institutional support in addressing such issues leaves many Black faculty burned out (Sue et al., 2011).
Summarizing his findings of biases in SETs, Reid (2010: 145) concluded that “racial minority faculty may represent a double violation of stereotype-based expectancies. The first violation is that faculty of color deviate from the stereotypical expectation that professors are bearded, bespectacled, White men.” Second, Black professors may “activate the negative racial stereotypes directly implicated in the perception of quality instruction like intellectual competence” (Reid, 2010: 146). Given such motivated cognition, students may be more likely to attribute any negative outcomes in the course to the race of the faculty member as opposed to their own insufficient performance (Sinclair & Kunda, 2000). Thus, the classroom experience and the SET are differential experiences borne by Black professors that could hinder their progress toward tenure.
Getting Promoted and Tenured
Receiving promotion has much to do with faculty productivity, solid teaching, and service, but often the discussion ignores the impact of the workplace environment. For example, in a sample of 1,691 academic and industrial research and development teams, work climate had a significantly positive relationship with number of research articles published (Keller, Julian, & Kedia, 1996). For Black faculty, the diversity climate of the department, business school, and university at large has a significant impact on the experience in academia. Diversity climate refers to “employees’ shared perceptions that an employer utilizes fair personnel practices and socially integrates underrepresented employees into the work environment” (McKay, Avery, & Morris, 2008: 350). McKay et al. (2008) found that the tendency for there to be race-based differences in job performance favoring White employees is attenuated when organizational climates are more supportive of diversity and heightened when they are not. In fact, in more hospitable diversity climates, they observed no significant Black-White or Hispanic-White differences in job performance. This finding was replicated and extended in other research, which showed that psychological safety (the feeling that one can be authentic without fear of reprisal) helps account for the impact of diversity climate on racial differences in job performance (Singh, Winkel, & Selvarajan, 2013). In essence, diversity climates reduce racial disparities in psychological safety, thereby allowing everyone to perform up to their potential. Moreover, diversity climates exert a similar influence on the magnitude of racioethnic differences in psychological and physical withdrawal (e.g., Avery, McKay, Tonidandel, & Wilson, 2007; McKay, Avery, Tonidandel, Morris, Hernandez, & Hebl, 2007), a finding that appears to generalize to business school faculty (Buttner, Lowe, & Billings-Harris, 2010).
Synthesizing the diversity climate literature and its relevance in this context, we find there are two key conclusions. First, when organizations are committed to supporting all of their personnel equally, racial and ethnic differences in engagement and performance tend to be negligible (McKay & Avery, 2015). Second, the effects of a supportive diversity climate are universally positive, even though they are somewhat more so for minority employees (Holmes, Jiang, Avery, McKay, Oh, & Tillman, 2020). Conversely, inhospitable diversity climates diminish functioning across the board and exacerbate performance differences between Black and White employees. This could be one of the reasons that promotion and tenure rates are significantly lower for Black than for White faculty in academic disciplines where these data have been examined (e.g., Durodoye, Gumpertz, Wilson, Griffith, & Ahmad, 2020; Fang, Moy, Colburn, & Hurley, 2000).
There are external forces that often disadvantage Black faculty disproportionally, as well. For instance, many Black faculty focus their research on issues of diversity. This should not be surprising, given the penchant for scholars to study issues of personal relevance in their lives. Though understandable for this reason, this decision can produce some unfortunate consequences. In fact, studying diversity is potentially stigmatizing (Cox, 1990; Lewis, 2020) in that there is a tendency for organizational scholars to view this work as somehow less legitimate than other subspecialties. Cox (1990) and Lewis (2020) both describe how this penchant is so pervasive that graduate school advisors often warn students against doing work in this area. This bias against diversity work results in “systematic subjectivity” in the publication process (King, Avery, Hebl, & Cortina, 2018) and potential prejudice in external reviews from those holding generally unfavorable views of this body of work as a whole.
Service
Black faculty report a greater service load, often known as the “hidden tax” or disproportionate “invisible burden” of being Black in academia. It is invisible because it is tied to informal counseling and advising of students that is often not formalized, tracked, and acknowledged. The “tax” represents a desirable organizational citizenship behavior for the business school that is unique to Black (and other marginalized) faculty yet involves a nontrivial commitment of time and energy that is often unrewarded by the faculty member’s department, especially at research-intensive institutions. Thus, this service can create tensions with the institutional research productivity expectations of research institutions. Differences in service levels occur, in part, because marginalized and underrepresented minority students often search to find that rare faculty member who might have shared types of experiences (Allen et al., 2000; Turner & Myers, 2000), and Black faculty feel an obligation to serve as role models because of this. Further, the department, business school, and university often need diverse representation on important committees, such as hiring, diversity and inclusion, and community relations. In support, in their study of 1,181 faculty members, Allen et al. (2000) found Black faculty spend significantly more time counseling minority students, serving on university committees on racial issues, serving on organizational committees on racial issues, and providing career and academic counseling to undergraduates than their White counterparts (Allen et al., 2000). Thus, the disproportionate service commitments among Black faculty are both a blessing, for being a resource for the marginalized students, and a potential burden, in its impact on other aspects of one’s career if the business school does not adequately value the effort and associated outcomes (see Allen et al., 2000; Delgado & Bell, 1989; Social Sciences Feminist Network Research Group, 2017).
Brightening the Path: Recommendations for Allies
We have summarized the research and viewpoints of how the lives of Black faculty in academia differ from those of White faculty in many ways, yet most significantly, we want to shine a light on what can be done to create change. We now offer institutional and programmatic elements that need advocacy in order to take action and make positive change.
Mentoring, Networks, and Marginality
Mentorship and the development of productive, supportive social networks are of critical import to Black faculty. Broadening one’s social networks may provide an opportunity for research collaboration with others holding different perspectives. First, individually, faculty should be mindful of the width and inclusiveness of their circle: how many Black faculty are in their work relationships, coauthors on papers, and assistant professors (or doctoral students) with whom they collaborate and mentor. An individual yet unified purposeful effort to widen our professional social networks will lessen the disparity in access to social resources among Black faculty. Importantly, this is not simply a call for altruism, as an invitation to collaborate with a qualified Black coauthor to an all-White research team could enhance the project’s quality by creating what Page (2019) calls diversity synergies (Freeman & Huang, 2014). In turn, we recommend that regardless of formal implementation, Black doctoral students and junior faculty seek out a mentor to help guide them throughout the tenure and promotion process.
Consistently, mentorship has been recognized as an important resource that impacts the likelihood of career success of Black faculty as well as one of the most lacking areas of support (Grant, 2012; Jones et al., 2015). Recent research indicates that quality mentoring even helps buffer against the negative impact of racial discrimination that may occur (Ragins, Ehrardt, Lyness, Murphy, & Capman, 2017). Even though the development of formal mentoring programs for Black faculty is important, within business schools accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, formal mentorship programs are rare (Raymond & Kannan, 2014). Jones et al. (2015) recommend that universities establish formal mentoring programs for Black faculty and find formal mentoring is most effective at the department or college level. Mentoring programs should be driven by a formal mandate for mentorship that has formal leadership support. The programs should have clear goals and measurable outcomes, use incentives for senior faculty to serve as mentors, include policies and workshops that promote the value of mentoring, and focus on developing faculty’s mentoring skills (Corneille, Lee, Allen, Cannady, & Guess, 2018; Evans & Cokley, 2008; Raymond & Kannan, 2014).
Teaching
As we have discussed, considerable research has found that student teaching evaluations of Black faculty have substantial bias. As such, there should be concerted efforts to mitigate the effects of such bias on Black faculty. Many scholars suggest that teaching evaluation scores be viewed more cautiously and that the biases of the students be taken into account (Daniel, 2019), which can be done using one of several methods (McPherson & Jewell, 2007; Merrit, 2008). Merrit (2008) envisions a more exhaustive evaluation that occurs less frequently and includes a focus group steered by individuals outside the university to help sort through bias. McPherson and Jewell (2007) found significant differences in SET scores based on race even after accounting for other factors, like expected grade, class size, and course subject, and due to this, they suggest the creation of adjusted SET scores that remove the biased effect they found through their study. In addition, because Black professors receive a disproportionate number of extreme scores, it may be reasonable to use the median SET score as a measure of centrality instead of the mean SET score.
Hiring, Promotion, and Tenure
Making progress in the areas of hiring, promotion, and tenure for Black faculty will take effort at all levels of the administration. Universities need to make clear that diversity and inclusion is a core value with visible, programmatic goals that have measurable outcomes for which departments and colleges are judged. They should identify and hire administrative leaders who value diversity and show a tangible and impactful track record of accomplishments in diversity and inclusion (Jones et al., 2015; Patitu & Hinton, 2003). In fact, a study of business school deans showed that racial awareness and recognition of the importance of cultural change significantly predicted minority faculty representation (Buttner, Lowe, & Billings-Harris, 2009). Further, tying diversity goal attainment with diversity audits to evaluate progress toward goals for diversity administrators, business school deans, and individual departments is necessary for accountability. Managing diversity in hiring, promotion, and tenure may be difficult at the university level, so having an associate dean of diversity in the business school is an effective way to ensure university-level goals and culture are aligned and implemented at the school level.
Business schools, renowned for being forward thinking and creating evidence-based knowledge, often neglect the practical application of our research findings in our own institutions. One area in particular is the hiring process. Management literature reveals anti-bias training to be effective in reducing trait–bias association and promoting more accepting attitudes and knowledge (e.g., Kawakami, Dovidio, & van Kamp, 2005; King, Dawson, Kravitz, & Gulick, 2012; Kulik & Roberson, 2008). Thus, it is optimal for all those involved in making hiring decisions to complete anti-bias training (see McMurtrie, 2016, for example). In concert with training, hiring committees should openly discuss their intention to create an equitable process before it begins, including the conditions for being a qualified job candidate prior to formally or informally reviewing applications. Having highly structured interviews designed by the selection committee in place before selecting among applicants can also reduce demographic biases in the interview process (e.g., McCarthy, Van Iddekinge, & Campion, 2010).
Many universities have found successful results in the hiring process from using equity advisors, who should be “respected senior faculty committed to equity” (Cardel et al., 2020: 722). Equity advisors should be given protected time to improve and monitor equity efforts and can often serve as ex officio members of the hiring, promotion, and tenure committee to ensure a fair and equal process of discussion (Cardel et al., 2020: 722). Reporting to the dean, equity advisors help with activities like approving job advertisement material, reemphasizing strategies to promote diversity hiring, examining applicant pool lists, and making hiring recommendations (Stepan-Norris, Kerrissey, & Lind, 2011).
The talent pool must be sufficiently diverse to have more equitable outcomes (O’Meara et al., 2020; Stewart & Valian, 2018). The way job positions are advertised plays a role in driving a diverse talent pool (see O’Meara et al., 2020). In job postings, it is important to emphasize the school’s commitment to diversity in concrete ways, like having formal mentorship opportunities (O’Meara et al., 2020). Even emphasizing the school’s desire to have faculty with experience across diverse, multicultural settings and highlighting the department’s emphasis on diversity has been shown in studies to influence the number of minority applicants (D. Smith et al., 2004). For example, D. Smith et al. (2004) found that when job searches had job descriptions that mentioned a departmental diversity emphasis or subfield like diversity studies, 47% of hires were faculty of color. Next, it is important to broaden one’s social network when advertising for jobs. Do not rely solely on the department’s faculty networks, which are often homophilous, but seek out others with diverse networks and connections to mentoring and developing minority faculty (Stewart & Valian, 2018) and utilize minority-serving organizations, like the PhD Project and Management Faculty of Color Association. In fact, having the committee reach out to talented faculty of color in the field directly (i.e., targeted recruiting; Volpone, Thomas, Sinisterra, & Johnson, 2013) is often an effective way to diversify the applicant pool. Few schools use bold and competitive hiring strategies, but instead, many rely on traditional advertisements and await interested parties to submit applications. Yet, it is the more creative hiring strategies that are often more effective at increasing the number of underrepresented minority applicants in the pool (O’Meara et al., 2020; Turner & Myers, 2000). For example, some universities have found it helpful to recruit using cluster hires to better aid in the social support of minority faculty and also divide up some of the service requirements placed on them (see Mervis, 2020). Other innovative recruiting efforts include hosting minority recruiting weekends for faculty, supporting dual-career hiring, and creating diversity pipeline programs to nurture the development of relationships that aid in recruiting minority faculty (see Blake, 2020, and Taylor, 2007).
For a more equitable tenure and promotion process, colleges and universities should take several measures. First, the school should evaluate its promotion and tenure process to ensure that the requirements are equally available, clear, and consistent, because faculty are negatively impacted by ambiguity of the tenure process. They have difficulty navigating the process without strong ties within the social network to gain access to information (Corneille et al., 2018). Second, we recommend that human resources staff or trained equity advisors attend promotion and tenure discussions to act as an arbiter of the process to minimize biased assessments that may occur. Third, we recommend that training is regularly delivered for fair and equitable performance evaluation. This type of training has the added benefit of “demonstrating that an equitable, inclusive environment is highly valued at the institution and the responsibility of everyone” (Corneille et al., 2018: 342). Finally, a broader set of research topics, especially diversity and inclusion, must be valued similarly to more mainstream topics within the tenure process (Jones et al., 2015). Valuing diverse research interests is often a way to support diversity among faculty members and support faculty career development. In fact, some universities have a diversity-and-inclusion component linked to tenure and promotion that tracks diversity and inclusion contributions in research, teaching, and service. Ultimately, all of our suggestions can help ensure there is a supportive diversity climate that undergirds the promotion and tenure process.
Service
As mentioned previously, there is an “invisible tax” that Black faculty experience as they are tasked with presenting minority interests in all levels of the university. Given these disproportionate service demands, it is advisable for universities to adopt minimum and maximum levels of service so that Black faculty do not bear an excessive burden of this work (Corneille et al., 2018). The service of Black faculty is often underrewarded and invisible, so acknowledging these types of service is essential. In addition, promotion and tenure committees should take into account the extra service roles that Black faculty experience and value this among other tenure standards (Frazier, 2011; Jones et al., 2015).
Conclusion
In this commentary, we have considered some of the disparate experiences of Black management faculty compared with those of others and provided suggestions for allies. For many readers, the ideas presented in this commentary may cause discomfort or disbelief, particularly given perceptions of some that diversity and inclusiveness exist in academia. As in other settings, these beliefs allow for many inequities to go unrecognized and unchallenged. By shining a light on injustices that may have previously gone unnoticed, we all have an opportunity and a responsibility to work for change along a brightened path for all.
