Abstract
Following the deaths of many Black Americans in spring 2020, public consciousness rose around the societal mega-threat of racism. In response, many organizations released public statements to condemn racism and affirm their stance on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). However, little is known about the specific thematic contents covered in such diversity statements and their implications on important organizational outcomes. Taking both inductive and deductive approaches, we conducted two studies to advance our understanding in this area. Study 1 employed structural topic modeling (STM)—an advanced unsupervised machine-learning text-mining technique—and comprehensively analyzed the latent semantic topics underlying the diversity statements publicly released by Fortune 1000 companies in late May and early June 2020. The results uncovered six underlying latent semantic topics: (1) general DEI terms, (2) supporting Black community, (3) acknowledging Black community, (4) committing to diversifying the workforce, (5) miscellaneous words, and (6) titles and companies. Furthermore, drawing from the identity-blindness and identity-consciousness theoretical frameworks and leveraging millions of data points of employees’ DEI ratings retrieved from Glassdoor.com, Study 2 further tested and supported hypotheses that companies were more positively rated by their employees on organizational diversity and inclusion if they (1) released (vs. did not release) diversity statements and (2) emphasized identity-conscious (vs. identity-blind) topics in their diversity statements. Our findings shed light on important theoretical implications for the current research and offer practical recommendations for organizational scientists and practitioners in diversity management.
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Notes
Please note that the categorization is not mutually exclusive, as some words can be cross loaded on multiple categories. In other words, a word can be simultaneously related to more than one topic. For this “doctor”/ “dog” example, words such as “food” can be meaningfully associated with both medical and animal topics.
More technical details can be found via the website http://www.structuraltopicmodel.com/
Topic 6 was excluded in the analysis, as the prevalence of topic 6 was perfectly related to the first five topics. That is, the prevalence of topic 6 equals to 1 minus the sum of the prevalence of the other five topics (because the prevalence of the six topics is summed to be 1). Thus, topic 6 would be redundant when other five topics were included.
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Appendix 1
Appendix 1
An Example of Racial Equity Statement Released by the CEO of Walmart
June 5, 2020 |
Making a Difference in Racial Equity To: Walmart associates From: Doug McMillon, President and CEO – Walmart In our 50-plus years as a company, it rings true more each year that the world’s challenges are our challenges. The global health crisis has tested all of us in recent months, and the racial violence in the U.S. – in particular, the murder of George Floyd – is tragic, painful and unacceptable Today, on what would have been our Associate and Shareholder Celebration, we’ll come together during our Friday Afternoon Meeting to talk about a number of things. But I didn’t want to wait until then to share with you some important decisions we’ve made about how we will move forward – together – in the fight for greater racial equity inside and outside Walmart Inside the company, our work to recruit, develop and support African Americans and other people of color will be even more of a priority. We need each of you to actively partner to identify and work with your leaders to bring in great talent to the company. We want all of you to exercise your voice to make every part of our company even better To influence and lead change in society more broadly, we are going to invest resources and develop strategies to increase fairness, equity and justice in aspects of everyday life. We will find the natural overlaps between Walmart’s core business and society’s larger needs that perpetuate racism and discrimination. Specifically, we’re going to focus the power of Walmart on our nation’s financial, healthcare, education and criminal justice systems In addition to leveraging our business to drive these outcomes, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation are committing $100 million over five years through a new center on racial equity. The goal of the center will be to address systematic racism in society head-on and accelerate change. Through the $100 million commitment, the center will support philanthropic initiatives that align with the four key areas noted above. The center will seek to advance economic opportunity and healthier living, including issues surrounding the social determinants of health, strengthening workforce development and related educational systems, and support criminal justice reform with an emphasis on examining barriers to opportunity faced by those exiting the system As an associate at Walmart, you are expected to truly, authentically and more deeply embrace inclusion. We must work together to actively shape the culture to be more inclusive and not just accept our differences but celebrate them – all the time – within every team We’ve made a difference in the world in so many ways. We can make a meaningful, lasting difference in racial equity, too |
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Wang, W., Dinh, J.V., Jones, K.S. et al. Corporate Diversity Statements and Employees’ Online DEI Ratings: An Unsupervised Machine-Learning Text-Mining Analysis. J Bus Psychol 38, 45–61 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-022-09819-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-022-09819-x