The New Principle-Practice Gap: The Disconnect between Diversity Beliefs and Actions in the Workplace

Today, the main way organizations promote buy-in for DEI is to make the business case. Most companies typically position diversity to their managers and employees as a positive business driver, suggesting that a diverse workforce can lead to better outcomes and profit. In this seminar, Jamillah Bowman Williams, Professor of Law, Georgetown University & Visiting BiGS Racial Equity Fellow at Harvard Business School, will share why making the business...

Concrete Diversity Goals Attract Female Applicants, but Managers Resist Using Them

Many organizations struggle to attract a demographically diverse workforce. Can adding a concrete goal to a public diversity commitment (e.g., “We care about diversity” versus “We care about diversity and plan to hire at least one woman or racial minority for every White man we hire”) help organizations attract applications from historically marginalized groups? Concrete diversity goals could raise belongingness concerns amongst marginalized group members...

The Bounded Creativity of Central Bankers

Central bankers in the United States and Europe became conservative heroes in the 1980s, then fell from their pedestals in the 2010s.  Yet this evolution cannot be easily understood as political scapegoating of independent central bankers, or as a reaction to the central banks’ perceived responsibility for the financial crisis and its aftermath.  As I argue, it can be traced back to central bankers’ policy innovations, which in turn involved a re-association of heterogeneous realities – central banking itself...

“Culture” and “Charisma” in Startups: Founders’ Story Construction and Audience Resonance

Under Review, 2020 American Sociological Association Award for Best Student Paper in Economic Sociology and Entrepreneurship

Cultural entrepreneurship shows us that storytelling is an important part of shaping organizational identity and resource acquisition, but who constructs stories? And how does story construction impact investor (audience) resonance? This study builds on existing scholarship and suggests that different types of founders, like “...