Action Plan
Engage with the broader business community to promote racial equity.
Engage with the broader business community to promote racial equity.
Harvard Business School is fortunate to have an impact far beyond its campus and the students we educate in our own programs. Our work, behavior, and actions influence the practices of the broader business community of managers, scholars, and educators. We therefore have both an opportunity and a responsibility to encourage the pursuit of racial equity widely and strongly. We are also aware, however, that our own shortcomings leave us with limited expertise or moral authority to teach other organizations how to approach racial matters. Our initial actions in the broader business community are therefore focused on learning from and alongside others rather than taking the lead on advising or instructing others.
In the short run, our business engagement efforts will focus on:
- reviewing our own purchasing to make sure that our vendors include a greater share of Black-owned businesses (including advising Black-owned businesses on how to become HBS vendors);
- enabling and encouraging companies that recruit at HBS to reveal how well they are performing on diversity metrics; and
- developing Executive Education programs that serve the needs of Black leaders (see section 3).
As HBS’s knowledge and credibility on matters of race grow, we will use the Racial Equity Initiative to take more action in the broader business community. We are considering, for instance:
- Convening roundtables of Black executives and allied leadership to deepen our understanding of best practices for creating and managing a diverse workforce.
- Creating a “playbook” that captures best practices for creating and managing a diverse workforce. This playbook would be a living document, updated as the world evolves. It would help Harvard Business School and other organizations focus on the metrics that matter in attracting, hiring, and retaining a diverse workforce and ensuring their Boards of Directors are equally diverse.
- Creating published content or advisory services that help Black entrepreneurs succeed and grow their businesses.
- Working with local government, companies, nonprofits, and other institutions to make Boston, our hometown, a more racially equitable city.