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January 2024 (Revised June 2024)
Case

Equal Justice Initiative: Mercy, Truth and Dignity

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, Gerald Chertavian and Brittany Logan

In 1989, the Equal Justice Initiative was established as a non-profit, public interest law firm by Harvard Law School graduate, Bryan Stevenson.

EJI provides legal assistance to condemned prisoners, people wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced, children in... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Nonprofit Organizations; Mission and Purpose; Growth and Development Strategy; Social Issues; Race

Educators

April 2023
Article

Racial Inequality in Work Environments

By: Letian Zhang

This article explores racial stratification in work environments. Inequality scholars have long identified racial disparities in wage and occupational attainment, but workers’ careers and well-being are also shaped by elements of their work environment, including firm... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Race; Equality and Inequality; Working Conditions; Personal Development and Career; Organizational Culture

September–October 2021
Article

Frontiers: Can an AI Algorithm Mitigate Racial Economic Inequality? An Analysis in the Context of Airbnb

By: Shunyuan Zhang, Nitin Mehta, Param Singh and Kannan Srinivasan

We study the effect of Airbnb’s smart-pricing algorithm on the racial disparity in the daily revenue earned by Airbnb hosts. Our empirical strategy exploits Airbnb’s introduction of the algorithm and its voluntary adoption by hosts as a quasi-natural experiment. Among... View Details

Keywords: Smart Pricing; Pricing Algorithm; Machine Bias; Discrimination; Racial Disparity; Social Inequality; Airbnb Revenue; Revenue; Race; Equality and Inequality; Prejudice and Bias; Price; Mathematical Methods; Accommodations Industry

SSRN

September 2022
Article

Regulatory Spillover and Workplace Racial Inequality

By: Letian Zhang

This paper suggests that affirmative action bans in the U.S. public sector may influence racial inequality in the private sector. Since the 1990s, nine states have banned affirmative action practice in public universities and state governments. Though these bans have... View Details

Keywords: Inequality; Regulation; Law; Organizational Norm; CEO; Affirmative Action; Organizations; Private Sector; Equality and Inequality; Diversity; Race; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms

13 Feb 2012
Research & Ideas

The Case Against Racial Colorblindness

policies, an issue Norton addresses in a recent working paper, Racial Colorblindness: Emergence, Practice, and Implications, cowritten with Evan P. Apfelbaum of MIT and Samuel R. Sommers of Tufts University. "Though once emblematic of the... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2021
Working Paper

Racial Inequality in Organizations: A Systems Psychodynamic Perspective

By: Sanaz Mobasseri, William Kahn and Robin Ely

This paper uses systems psychodynamic concepts to develop a theory about the persistence of racial inequality in U.S. companies, treating White men as the dominant group and Black people as an illustrative subordinate group. We theorize that this persistence is rooted... View Details

Keywords: Systems Psychodynamics; Organizational Inequality; Masculinity; Equality and Inequality; Race; Gender; Identity; Power and Influence

September 2020
Case

West Side United: Hospitals Tackle the Racial Health and Wealth Gap

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Paul Stramaglia

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. David Ansell, Darlene Hightower, and Ayesho Jaco, leaders of West Side United (WSU), a coalition of Chicago hospitals, community residents, banks, and small businesses conceived in 2016, reviewed progress toward WSU’s goal of ending... View Details

Keywords: COVID; COVID-19; Hospital; Coalition; Health Pandemics; Race; Health; Wealth and Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Change; Leadership; Chicago

Educators

Purchase

October 2024
Article

Racial Inequality in Organizations: A Systems Psychodynamic Perspective

By: Sanaz Mobasseri, William A. Kahn and Robin J. Ely

This paper uses systems psychodynamic concepts to develop theory about the persistence of racial inequality in U.S. organizations and to inform an approach for disrupting it. We treat White men as the dominant group and Black people as the archetypal subordinate group... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Race; Prejudice and Bias; Organizational Culture; Gender; Power and Influence; Employees; Attitudes

Purchase

2020
Working Paper

Hospital Allocation and Racial Disparities in Health Care

By: Amitabh Chandra, Pragya Kakani and Adam Sacarny

We develop a simple framework to measure the role of hospital allocation in racial disparities in health care and use it to study Black and white Medicare patients who are treated for heart attacks—a condition where virtually everyone receives care, hospital care is... View Details

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Equality and Inequality; Race; Analysis

21 Feb 2023
Research & Ideas

What's Missing from the Racial Equity Dialogue?

highlight key considerations that aren’t at the forefront of today’s dialogue about racial discrimination and injustice. Here’s what they said: Broderick Turner: Anti-Black racism affects White people We do not connect the dots on how... View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

Article

A Fair Game? Racial Bias and Repeated Interaction between NBA Coaches and Players

By: Letian Zhang

There is strong evidence of racial bias in organizations but little understanding of how it changes with repeated interaction. This study proposes that repeated interaction has the potential to reduce racial bias, but its moderating effects are limited to the treatment... View Details

Keywords: Discrimination; Bias; Interaction; NBA; Prejudice and Bias; Race; Equality and Inequality; Interpersonal Communication; Sports

2019
Working Paper

Industrial Change, the Boundary of the Firm, and Racial Employment Segregation

By: John-Paul Ferguson and Rembrand Koning

Racial employment segregation between large workplaces in America has grown over the last generation. We know little about how changes in patterns of employment by economic sector have contributed to this growth, though. While there are many stylized narratives about... View Details

Keywords: Workplace Segregation; Firm Boundaries; Organizations; Employees; Segmentation; Race; Change; United States

17 Oct 2018
Research & Ideas

Pro Basketball Coaches Display Racial Bias When Selecting Lineups

that coaches demonstrate less racial preference when their team is on a losing streak or in playoff games. More than any other American sport, basketball is dominated by African American players. Three-quarters of athletes running up and... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding; Sports

30 May 2024
Research & Ideas

Racial Bias Might Be Infecting Patient Portals. Can AI Help?

messages. That’s part of the reason the authors say there may be other factors besides direct racial bias driving the results—and a key reason that they are keen to explore this data in future research. One potential factor they... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Health

02 Mar 2021
HBS Case

The Tulsa Massacre: Is Racial Justice Possible 100 Years Later?

area. When residents tried to flee burning buildings, they were shot and killed in the street. An estimated 300 people died, 1,000 families lost their homes, and $1.8 million in property was destroyed, equal to $26.1 million today. The... View Details

Keywords: by Michael Blanding

11 Oct 2022
Research & Ideas

Shrinking the Racial Wealth Gap, One Mortgage at a Time

Hiring more minority loan officers could help people of color secure significantly more home loans and address one of the biggest factors driving the racial wealth gap, new research finds. In the white-dominated US banking industry,... View Details

Keywords: by Rachel Layne; Financial Services

September 2020
Teaching Note

West Side United: Hospitals Tackle the Racial Health and Wealth Gap

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Joyce J. Kim

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 321-026. View Details

Keywords: COVID-19; COVID; Hospital; Coalition; Health Pandemics; Race; Health; Wealth and Poverty; Equality and Inequality; Change; Leadership; Chicago

Purchase

2022
Working Paper

Distributional Consequences of Monetary Policy Across Races: Evidence from the U.S. Credit Register

By: Laura Alfaro, Ester Faia and Camelia Minoiu

We examine the consequences of monetary policy on racial disparities, focusing on the role of bank lending to firms through collateral and selection channels. Leveraging comprehensive loan-level data from the U.S. credit register (Y-14Q) of the Federal Reserve, we show... View Details

Keywords: Monetary Policy Transmission; Inequity; Credit Registry; Wealth; Collateral Channel; Selection; Racial Disparity; Racial Inequality; Equality and Inequality; Banks and Banking; Credit; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Banking Industry; United States