How Firms Turn Middle Managers into Diversity Leaders

How Firms Turn Middle Managers into Diversity Leaders Alexandra Kalev* and Frank Dobbin** ABSTRACT In 2007, the Conference Board published a piece calling middle managers “the biggest roadblock to diversity and inclusion” for standing in the way of change efforts. Today, many chief diversity officers report that they have failed both to diversify middle management and to get middle managers involved in promoting inclusion. We explore popular diversity programs that create “paper” or “symbolic” principles for achieving diversity (diversity policy statements and guidelines for hiring, promotion, and discharge), as well as programs that engage middle managers in promoting diversity (special recruitment and mentoring programs, and diversity task forces). “Paper” policies often fall flat, but by getting managers involved in finding new talent, mentoring staff, and designing new diversity initiatives, firms have turned them into champions of diversity. Our quantitative analyses, tracking more than 800 firms over more than three decades, show that “paper” policies often have adverse effects, while manager-led targeted recruitment programs, mentoring programs, and diversity taskforces have been hugely effective at diversifying the ranks of management. Interviews with managers document why these programs are so effective. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 494 I. “PAPER” DIVERSITY POLICY AND GUIDELINES ................................. 497 II. OPEN RECRUITMENT ........................................................................ 501 A. Target Diverse Schools and Groups ............................................ 502 * Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University. ** Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Harvard University. Dobbin and Kalev are coauthors of Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t (Harvard University Press 2022). 493 494 Seattle University Law Review [Vol. 46:493 B. Put Managers In Charge.............................................................. 504 III. OPEN MENTORING .......................................................................... 507 A. Create a Formal Mentoring Program.......................................... 508 B. Make Matches Based on Interests, Not Demographics................ 511 C. Open the Program to All Employees ........................................... 511 IV. CREATE DIVERSITY TASK FORCES ................................................. 514 A. Brainstorming for Solutions—An Example .................................. 516 B. Getting Managers to Lead ........................................................... 517 C. Tracking Success.......................................................................... 518 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................... 520 INTRODUCTION At the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of his dream of a future free from racial discrimination and animus. The next year, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, making it illegal for all employers to discriminate on the basis of race or sex. Through the 1960s and 1970s, corporate America made slow but steady progress on opening opportunity. White women, Black women and men, Latinx women and men, and Asian American women and men gained more corporate jobs and made inroads into management. 1 But for Black and Latinx Americans, that progress stalled sometime in the 1980s, according to data collected by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.2 In 1985, 6% of Black men working in corporate America were managers, as were 7% of Latinx men. For both groups, the percentages were the same in 2018.3 At this rate, Black and Latinx men will never reach parity with white men, of whom 16% are managers—that number has held steady.4 Over the same period, 4% of Black women working in corporate America were managers at the start, and 5% were managers at the end.5 Latinx women rose from 4 to 6%.6 At this rate it will be a century before either group reaches parity with white men.7 1. See FRANK DOBBIN, INVENTING EQUAL OPPORTUNITY 1–21 (2009). 2. See Employment Statistics, U.S. EQUAL EMP. OPPORTUNITY COMM’N, https://www.eeoc.gov/statistics/employment [https://perma.cc/B8SD-8Y5M]. Numbers for earlier years were calculated using micro data provided by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under a confidential Intergovernmental Personnel Agreement to Dobbin and Kalev. See generally FRANK DOBBIN & ALEXANDRA KALEV, GETTING TO DIVERSITY: WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T (2022). 3. See Employment Statistics, supra note 2. 4. Id. 5. Id. 6. Id. 7. Id. 2023] How Firms Turn Middle Managers into Diversity Leaders 495 White women made steady progress until 2000, when 10% were managers, but progress slowed to a near standstill; by 2018, only 11% of white women were managers. It will be a century before they reach parity with white men if this trend continues.8 Asian American men and women made greater headway. Ten percent of Asian American men were managers in 1995; in 2018, 15% were managers.9 For women, the number grew from 5 to 9%.10 But Asian American men and women are the best educated of all of these groups— 54% of Asian Americans aged twenty-five and older have bachelor’s degrees (or more), compared with 33% of all Americans.11 Their progress in the corporation has lagged behind their progress in educational attainment. Why has progress on diversifying the workforce slowed? A host of studies suggest that the conventional organizational remedies to blocked opportunities have failed, namely programs that lay blame for discrimination on individual managers. Diversity training programs signal that managerial bias is the main culprit. Civil rights and harassment grievance systems telegraph that misbehavior is the root problem and can be rooted out by quasi-judicial procedures that hold managers and coworkers to account. While discrimination and harassment remain widespread, myriad studies show that these programs, which place blame on individual managers, are more likely to reduce managerial diversity than to promote it, suggesting that they backfire.12 In this Article we look at a different set of practices; neutral “paper” or “symbolic” anti-discrimination measures—diversity policies and hiring, promotion, and discharge guidelines—that set ground rules for managers. We contrast them with programs that directly engage managers in promoting workforce diversity. As in other domains, we suggest, “paper” diversity interventions do not lead to behavior change. We 8. Id. 9. See id. 10. Id. 11. Abby Budiman & Neil G. Ruiz, Key Facts About Asian Americans, a Diverse and Growing Population, PEW RSCH. CTR. (Apr. 29, 2021), https://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2021/04/29/key-facts-about-asian-americans/ [https://perma.cc/VXL4-KMX3]. 12. Lis (...truncated)