In this episode Dr Kamal Munir, reader in strategy and policy at the Cambridge Judge Business School, joins us to talk about how racial inequality is reproduced in organisations and why it continues to escape scrutiny. 

We think about how the Black Lives Matter protests have prompted organisations to do some soul-searching, and we explore some practical solutions to achieving racial equality at the workplace.

About Kamal:

Dr Kamal Munir is Reader in Strategy & Policy at the Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, where he also serves as the Academic Director of the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy. His research interests lie in social change and stasis. Dr Munir is a Fellow of Homerton College and also serves as the Race Equality Champion for the University of Cambridge.

Transcript:

Nick Saffell 0:00  

Hello and welcome to the other university. I'm your host, Nick Saffell. In this episode dr Kemal minear reader and strategy and policy at the Cambridge judge Business School, joins us to talk about how racial inequality is reproduced in organizations, why it continues to escape scrutiny. We think about how the Black Lives Matter protests, prompting organizations to do some soul searching and explore some practical solutions to achieving racial equality in the workplace. I'm going to jump in right into this one, what is institutional racism and sort of how is it different from straight up racism?

Kamal Munir 0:37  

I think institutional racism the clue is in the name that it is institutionalized when something becomes institutionalized, it comes to be taken for granted it is not questioned anymore. So whereas if you see someone walking on the street being called names based on their race, that would be pretty evident to you as racism, institutionalized racism, which mostly happens inside organizations and, and and of course, at a larger level in societies, you may not be able to tell. So white privilege is part of institutional racism, when people actually understand it to be just part of, you know, normal life and part of a meritocratic organization. And this is this is how it is. So, it is it is much less visible, it is much more subtle, and it is embedded in organizational processes and routines,

Nick Saffell  1:41  

thinking about the routines, how do workplaces contribute to sort of racial inequality then,

Kamal Munir 1:49  

basically, based on what I understand of organizations, there are two ways in which organizations contribute to institutional racism. And there are two myths that pervade most organizations. One is that they are meritocratic, and the other is that they are efficient. So, when an organization and the members of the organization understand the workplace to be meritocratic, they automatically assume that everyone who gets promoted everyone who gets hired is on the basis of merit. And if we go deep into organizations, we see that that is not necessarily the case. meritocracy, meritocracy tends to be a myth. And increasingly, there is more and more research coming out, showing exactly why meritocracy remains a myth in organizations. And when we look at organizations numbers, it becomes pretty apparent that there are certain people

Kamal Munir 2:58  

based on race, you know, who are just performing much better than others. So if you look at fortune 500 CEOs, 96% of them are non Hispanic whites. In America, if you look at top management in various sectors, you will take finance companies, only 2.4% of executive committee members 1.4% of managing directors and 1.4% of senior portfolio managers are black. Same in technology, only 1.9% of technology executives and 5.3% of tech professionals are African American in America. So similarly, the average black partnership rate at US law firms between 2005 and 2016 has been...