Can Black Lives Matter in the Boardroom? Explaining Corporate Responses to Racial Justice Protests

• In Event: 50220 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 9: Racialized Organizations

Abstract

In response to the murder of George Floyd, subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, and despite vilification of the protests by President Trump, some prominent U.S. firms publicly supported racial justice goals. This produced a right-wing panic at the rise of “woke capitalism” and jeers on the left that it was all talk and no action. We document a range of responses by US Fortune 500 firms, finding that most were silent, about 20% made symbolic statements, but another fifth made stronger pledges to advance racial equity. Theoretically we conceptualize corporate responses to Black Lives Matter protests as influenced by the relative power of internal corporate actors as well as their attention to external audiences. Internally, we focus on CEO and employee ideology, the strength of corporate DEI staff, the presence of Black executives in headquarters, and the race composition of the firm’s labor force. External audiences include other corporate elites, concern for brand reputations, and physical distance to Black Lives Matter protests. We find that right-wing CEO political orientation blocked racial justice response, while DEI staff prominence in the global DEI network as well as corporate board centrality are associated with more racial justice commitments, stronger commitments, and pledges more likely to be efficacious. Branded firms were also broadly more responsive, but Black headquarters executives were associated with only symbolic responses. We do not see a pattern of “woke” DEI focused capitalism emerging, although we do document instances in which a subset of DEI professionals were influential in moving their firms toward promising racial justice stances in a moment of acute national dialog.

Author

• Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, University of Massachusetts, Amherst