As I mentioned a few days ago, the Alliance for Board Diversity released its 2010 board diversity census last week and the news is not good for African-American men. Though the new census is notable for a few reasons, including the demographic changes detailed below, an important development is the extension of the census to the Fortune 500 for the first time. In prior years, the census covered only the Fortune 100.
A few quick and dirty numbers from the Fortune 100:
– The number of board seats remained relatively flat between 2004 and 2010, with only 16 seats added.
– White men gained 32 board seats, while African-American men lost 42 seats.
-Women gained 16 board seats, though African-American women lost a seat
Figure 5 below shows more demographic detail on seats gained and lost between 2004 and 2010.
In 2010, for the first time, ABD expanded its board diversity research to include Fortune 500 companies. As would be expected, the Fortune 500 is less diverse than the Fortune 100.
The declining numbers of African-American board members may be particularly relevant to proponents of the benefits of a “critical mass” in the boardroom – that is, the theory that women and racial or ethnic minorities are unlikely to have an impact in the boardroom until they grow from a few tokens into a considerable minority of the board. As we discuss in Does Critical Mass Matter? Views From The Boardroom, though both our female and minority respondents provide insight on their “first and only” status, or about tokenisim more specifically, very few of our texts address the issue of a critical mass of minority (as opposed to female) directors. This almost certainly reflects the simple fact that relatively few public companies have three or more minority directors (the ABD report lists those in the Fortune 500 that do). And even among those companies, minority directors are generally from different demographic groups, such as African-American, Asian, or Hispanic, rather than from a single demographic group. For example, according to the latest ABD numbers, only a handful of corporations in the Fortune 500 have three or more board members who self-identify as being from the same racial minority group. (For more on the origins of the magic number of three in critical mass theory see here.)
As to the question of whether critical mass matters in our respondents’ accounts, the short answer is that our texts provide some support for gender-based accounts of critical mass theory, but of a more limited sort than that reported in other recent qualitative studies of critical mass in the boardroom. Some female respondents expressed the view, consistent with Rosabeth Kanter’s original articulation of critical mass theory, that having more women on the board increased their comfort level. We also heard stories of the stresses associated with being the first and only female or minority board member, including the pressure to work harder; automatic visibility, and the heightened scrutiny that comes with it; being viewed as the sole representative of an essentialized conception of female or minority interests; and anxiety about making it harder for future female or minority candidates.
Yet, this narrative is in tension with our respondents’ professed comfort with their “first and only” status and the benefits that they perceive accompany these stresses. Many of our respondents tend to view themselves as path breakers – often the first and only female or minority at many important career stages. They exhibit a certain pride in the notion that they are highly qualified corporate directors, accustomed to their “outsider” status, and need no additional reassurance or support from the presence of other members of their demographic group. All report an ability to function as effective directors, even when the sole female or minority in the boardroom. Moreover, with the possible exception of employee relations (which we discuss at length here and I have blogged about here and here) our interviews do not support theories that a critical mass of female directors will produce different, or distinctly feminine, outcomes.
I’m sure that I’ll be back with more on this topic in the future. Board diversity seems a particularly newsworthy topic these days, though much of the news and commentary (especially news and commentary out of Europe) involves gender, rather than racial, diversity.