BUSINESS

What the numbers say about diversity on corporate boards. Through the decades, corporate boards have been mostly white and mostly male. That started changing in the early 1970s. Fueled by the historic gains of the Civil Rights Movement that broke down racial and gender barriers, a variety of social groups such as the National Black MBA Association and the National Organization for Women pressured corporations to build diversity programs into their management structures. Over the years, a dramatic change has occurred. My latest research on the corporate boards of the top 50 companies from 2011 to 2023 shows that the percentage of whites dropped to 73.6%, the percentage of men dropped to 65.3% and, rather remarkably, the percentage of white men dropped below 50%, to 49.5%. My research inc...

No credit score? A grocery list could be the next best thing. How you shop and what you buy at the grocery store can predict whether you pay your credit card bills on time, our new research shows. As marketing professors, we wanted to learn about alternatives to traditional credit scores. So we teamed up with a multinational conglomerate that, among other things, runs a large supermarket chain and a credit card issuer. By analyzing consumer-level data from those two business units, we were able to see how 30,089 individuals shop and manage their finances. We found that people with more consistent grocery shopping habits are more likely to pay their credit card bills on time. These are people who tend to shop on the same day of the week, spend about the same amount each month, buy s...

Young investors: Here’s some tips for getting into the market. You’ve likely heard of Minecraft. It’s a simple game where you slowly place blocks and craft items from containers to castles and entire cities. You’ve probably also heard of the first-person shooter Call of Duty (COD), where players navigate fast-paced war zones. Like gaming, investing is all about how you approach it. You can build slow but safe, like in Minecraft, or you can go fast and risk more, like in COD. If you’re a young person who has just gotten your first paycheck or saved a tidy sum from your first job, you might be thinking about how to invest your money. However, the stock market can be a daunting place. Fortunes are built and lost in days. You can take the fast approach and risk it all on getting the bi...

Court blocks grants to Black women entrepreneurs in case that could restrict DEI efforts by companies and charities. In a 2-1 vote on June 3, 2024, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit held that the Fearless Foundation – the charitable arm of the Fearless Fund venture capital firm – must suspend its Strivers Grant Contest. The contest is limited to Black women who are majority owners of businesses. The Conversation asked Angela R. Logan, a scholar of nonprofit administration and diversity, equity and inclusion policies, to explain the significance of this case, American Alliance for Equal Rights v. Fearless Fund Management, and what’s at stake. What is the Fearless Fund? Ayana Parsons and Arian Simone, two experienced Black entrepreneurs, established the Fear...

Risky business: Why executives keep finding themselves in political firestorms. Back in March 2022, Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek said that his company wouldn’t take a public stand on Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Four days later, he yielded to rebukes from LGBTQ employees, reversed his decision and criticized the bill publicly. In the ensuing political firestorm, the state of Florida revoked Disney’s 55-year-old favored tax and regulatory status, sparking legal disputes that lasted well into 2024. Chapek, deeply weakened, was fired not long after the controversy broke, in November 2022. Disney may be a unique case, but it isn’t alone. Business leaders are increasingly at risk of political sparks igniting into firestorms that can devastate their companies. For example, in...