University Study Finds Racial Minorities Are Not in the Inner-Circle of Corporate Directors

AOMlogoResearchers at the University of Michigan and the University of Texas at San Antonio have conducted a study which shows that while racial minorities make up 22 percent of the corporate directors who serve on a single board, they are only 5 percent of the corporate directors who serve on more than one board.

“This is an important distinction because holders of multiple board seats tend to be seen by other corporate leaders as members of the corporate elite,” said James Westphal, a professor of strategy at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and one of the co-authors of the study. “Those with multiple directorships tend to exercise disproportionate influence over corporate policy at each of the firms where they serve as director.”

The study, published in the Academy of Management Journal, examined the board composition of the 2,000 largest companies in the United States.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Get the JBHE Weekly Bulletin

Receive our weekly email newsletter delivered to your inbox

Latest News

Recent Books of Interest to African American Scholars

The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education regularly publishes a list of new books that may be of interest to our readers. The books included are on a wide variety of subjects and present many different points of view.

North Carolina A&T State University Mounts Effort to Educate Heirs Property Owners

Heirs property is land passed down through a family, often over multiple generations and to numerous descendants, without the use of wills or probate courts. In North Carolina, the value of land owned as heirs property is estimated at nearly $1.9 billion. Heirs property is disproportionately held by Black landowners.

Higher Education Grants or Gifts of Interest to African Americans

Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.

New Legislation Aims to Boost Entrepreneurial Efforts of HBCU Students

Congresswoman Nikema Williams (GA-05) has introduced the Minority Entrepreneurship Grant Program Act, bipartisan legislation that creates a grant program with the Small Business Administration for entrepreneurs at minority-serving institutions like historically Black colleges and universities.

Featured Jobs