The argument was that businesses that had already embraced diversity in the c-suite were more successful than their conventional counterparts. It didn’t translate because most of the companies that supposedly “embraced DEIB” only did so as window dressing and didn’t actually change their culture.
In my experience, execs seemed to think “embracing DEIB” equated to hiring one VP DEIB, giving them zero resources, ignoring their input and expecting the mere act of having a VP DEIB (without doing any real work) would change their culture and foster a welcoming place for diverse talent to thrive.
Inverted causation? Companies with good inclusive professional culture, an eye for talent, know how to find undervalued labor, and promote based on talent do well. As a result, they had diverse staff at high levels.
Hiring diverse staff at high levels, however, doesn't get you the other 4 things.
diverse and not. ive had leaders, peers and led teams of both. diversity in background = diversity in perspectives and invariably leads to strategic outcomes CEOs want to see! And for the last 15 years!
outcomes are not driving this claw back; theyre cutting operating costs and this is the excuse
One quote in particular suggests the speaker has no familiarity with how racism actually functions: “It seemed implausible because companies would have jumped on it and the advantages would be competed away,” said John Hand, an accounting professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Particularly given how and why the university where he teaches chose to lose out on Nikole Hannah-Jones teaching journalism there, it’s not as if there isn’t a recent example of one way racism works close by.
This makes no sense in so many ways. All sorts of companies DON'T do all sorts of things that would make them more money for all sorts of reasons. A cursory evaluation of failing businesses would reveal that.
Also why would the advantage be "competed away?" Computers give businesses advantages...
... and everybody has (now) rushed to adopt them, and yet they still provide competitive advantages over anybody trying to run a business without computers in 2024.
Also many companies DIDN'T rush to adopt computers! Most of them aren't around any more!
Also also also also why an accountng prof?
Reminds me of the old “the wage gap can’t be real or else companies would favor women” my friend the first mistake you are making is assuming the market is reasonable and companies aren’t run by people who make bad decisions for personal reasons.
That reminds me of the old adage, "The markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
Even if you posit that the market is ultimately fully rational and efficient, it should be prima facie that the market isn't always in this hypothetical equilibrium state!
There's no money in it.. so the shareholders don't like acts of charity like actually giving a crap about their employees, their livelihoods or whether their wages actually cover the bills in that area of town.
They also have no patience.
If there isn't an immediate increase in profits one fiscal quarter after the new initiatives are introduced, they declare them to be a failure, rather than waiting for their new employees to be trained and become skilled in their new roles.
Tbh, that's because they've already squeezed the rest of us dry.
Late stage capitalism means that with all finite resources claimed via colonization, the only remaining fight is over who can gain the most of what's already here. As inequality grows, that fight in turn grows increasingly short term.
I thought everyone understood the point of McKinsey et al was that when your company wanted to do something (fire lots of people, overpay the CEO, in this case I guess diversify the leadership) McKinsey et al would be happy to whip up an expensively shiny presentation saying The Numbers demand it.
Nice to see this tool isn't used exclusively for evil, I guess, but on the other hand it's unsurprising that this will be the one case where people went back later and collectively said "hey wait a minute maybe they made those numbers up". And not all the equally fake reports demanding layoffs etc.
I think the fact a company wanted to not just hire generic white male MBAs and asked McKinsey to see if that made sense threw people off from the usual "consultants are terrible at objective analysis" understanding.
A rare example of a management consulting firm making the world better rather than extracting more profit.
Of course that will be treated as an unfortunate mistake.
