How Wall Street Wound Up the Last Bastion of Support For Diversity.
By Alison Taylor
As aggressive executive orders and legal threats pile up, a retreat against diversity, equity and inclusion commitments and goals is well under way at American corporations. Legal teams everywhere are conducting panicky reviews of draft 10-Ks — the reports filed by listed companies — replacing the dreaded “DEI” acronym with vague euphemisms like “belonging”, “workforce planning” and “talent retention”.
As always, it is important to parse both the signal and the noise. And, if we look beyond the jargon, and focus on the substance of goals, policies and commitments, we find a much more nuanced and complicated picture. Many diversity and sustainability advocates will tell you that behind the scenes, the “real work” continues, and it is just the language and public goals that have shifted. But still, CEO statements matter, and so does the relentless spate of daily headlines. Both send important messages to employees and customers about values, culture, and why diversity does — or doesn’t — matter.
In this context, you might imagine that heads of consumer facing, sustainability-forward brands would be better placed to resist this broad vibe shift. This does not seem to be the case. Counter-intuitively, it is the CEOs most associated with traditional shareholder capitalism that are most willing to maintain their headline diversity commitments.
Read the full Times Higher Education article.
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Alison Taylor is a Clinical Associate Professor at NYU Stern.