Reproducing inequity: the role of race in the business school faculty search

Will Social Marketing Fight for Black Lives? An Open Letter to the Field

“…To support this shift in mindset, we pose five questions for those in the social marketing field to consider as they work to embed racial equity throughout the role they play. We develop these questions based on learnings from ongoing research that seeks to expand the way we address race in marketing research (Grier & Poole, 2020; Poole et al, in press). These questions reflect an approach to retain an emphasis on equity while engaged in the research, design and implementation of social marketing initiatives.…”

“…These frameworks and theories will need to capture the structural elements of social challenges that impinge on peoples’ lived experience and behavior including social stratification, social structure, history power and privilege relevant to explaining current-day inequalities. In our recent work (Grier & Poole, 2020; Poole et al, in press), we use critical race theory (CRT; Delgado & Stefanic, 2017) to examine marketing challenges through a racial lens that identifies racism and its intersectionalities as central to American attitudes and institutions, rather than a matter of bad behavior by individual racists. CRT centers the role of race and racism as a social justice project aimed at equitable transformations of society.…”

“…In one article, we used CRT to examine the lack of a racially diverse faculty in American business schools, an important social challenge as business schools worldwide are predominately white (Grier & Poole, 2020). The lack of racial diversity underutilizes available talent and cheats students, other faculty and the institution out of the well-established benefits of faculty diversity.…”

“…Our findings show 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. We recommend how to modify typical practices that support inequitable outcomes and advocate a conspicuous and active social justice agenda to eliminate manifestations of the societal racial hierarchy in business school faculty recruiting (Grier & Poole, 2020).…”

#MeToo and beyond: inequality and injustice in marketing practice and academia

“…Potential reasons behind the restriction of academic freedom are obvious. CRT adopts various assumptions that encourage us to look critically at the world and determine how change can occur (e.g., Davis, 2018;Francis & Robertson, this issue;Grier & Poole, 2020;Mitchell, 2020). It holds that racism is a persistent feature of the social environment which delimits the opportunities of various groups.…”