September 14, 2020 | by Sonya A. Grier and Sonja Martin Poole

Business schools have a problem. Despite increases in underrepresented students of color at colleges and universities in the United States over the last few decades, the racial composition of business school faculty remains largely White. While students demand a more racially diverse faculty and businesses require it, schools of business seem perplexed by how to attain it.

Many studies of the so-called “diversity problem” blame racial disparities among business school faculty on the pipeline — the conduit of qualified candidates destined for faculty positions — which they say is small for a variety of reasons. Instead, our investigation offers an alternative approach to understanding the problem by focusing on the business school faculty search process using the insights and tools of Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Critical Race Theory is a transdisciplinary framework that scholars and practitioners have found useful for uncovering how racial domination is produced, naturalized, and contested within the law, public policy, and a wide variety of institutional and social locations. A CRT analysis is a paradigm shift in the marketing domain and stands in sharp contrast to the individuated understandings of racial disparity and social inequality that rule most disciplines and institutions today. Five key CRT tenets were relevant to our investigation: (1) the centrality and permanence of race and racism, (2) the intersectionality of race with other forms of subordination (3) the challenge to dominant ideology, (4) the centrality of experiential knowledge, and (5) the commitment to social justice.

Our investigation built on the narratives of Black and Latinx faculty* characterized as underrepresented in business schools and who are the type of "diverse faculty" that such institutions seek to employ. Study findings revealed that diversity is hindered by systems and practices in the business school faculty search process that persistently block efforts to improve faculty racial diversity.

Race is implicated in three distinct ways:

• First, rather than being a part of an ongoing school-wide conversation, the topic of “diversity” may only emerge during recruiting, and there is no ongoing shared understanding of why racial diversity is important to the search process. This places ambiguity in the rationale and meaning of diversity and leaves room for faculty to interject their own preferences which may counter the institution's objectives. In addition, the ambiguity allows for power dynamics to impinge on the process in a way that may disadvantage Black and Latinx candidates.

• Second, factors within and outside of the search process such as the dominant positions held by powerful committee chairs and committee members (even those that are themselves people of color) serve as gatekeepers.

• Our findings also identify an overlooked interrelationship between considerations of international and domestic diversity in American business schools that has not been explored.

Our investigation shows that despite efforts, the faculty search process is not race-neutral and instead racializes faculty candidates, as well as those who serve on search committees. In a practical sense, we address the challenges for business schools in achieving a diverse faculty body.

We suggest, for example, that business schools that are serious and sincere about faculty racial diversity have clear, explicit open discussions surrounding what diversity means, why it is important, and who is included to move beyond broad statements on and erroneous understandings of diversity in the search process and beyond.

We also provide recommendations on how to modify typical practices that support inequitable outcomes.

Read the article in the Journal of Marketing Management: Reproducing inequity: the role of race in the business school faculty search.

* Participants were from Black diaspora and racially-diverse Latinx backgrounds

Sonya A. Grier is Professor of Marketing in the Kogod School of Business at American University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar with diverse expertise across private, government, and non-profit sectors. Her research examines marketplace topics related to race, with a focus on enhancing consumer well- being. She is a co-founder of the Race in the Marketplace (RIM) Research Network.

Sonja Martin Poole is Associate Professor of Marketing in the School of Management at the University of San Francisco. She specializes in ideas and issues pertaining to race, public policy and marketing with a particular emphasis on organization dynamics inside institutions of higher education. She is a founding member of the Race in the Marketplace Research Network.