Race, Work, and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience

Rethinking How to Build Inclusive Organizations

Race, Work, and Leadership is a rare and important compilation of essays that examines how race matters in people's experience of work and leadership. What does it mean to be black in corporate America today? How are racial dynamics in organizations changing? How do we build inclusive organizations?

Inspired by and developed in conjunction with the research and programming for Harvard Business School's commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the HBS African American Student Union, this groundbreaking book shines new light on these and other timely questions and illuminates the present-day dynamics of race in the workplace. Contributions from top scholars, researchers, and practitioners in leadership, organizational behavior, psychology, sociology, and education test the relevance of long-held assumptions and reconsider the research approaches and interventions needed to understand and advance African Americans in work settings and leadership roles.

At a time when--following a peak in 2002--there are fewer African American men and women in corporate leadership roles, Race, Work, and Leadership will stimulate new scholarship and dialogue on the organizational and leadership challenges of African Americans and become the indispensable reference for anyone committed to understanding, studying, and acting on the challenges facing leaders who are building inclusive organizations.

Laura Morgan Roberts is a Teaching Professor of Management at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and a visiting scholar at Harvard Business School's Gender Initiative, researching the influence of African American business leaders. She is the author of numerous research articles, teaching cases, and practitioner-oriented tools, as well as two influential Harvard Business Review articles.

Anthony J. Mayo is the Thomas S. Murphy Senior Lecturer of Business Administration in the Organizational Behavior Unit of Harvard Business School. With Nitin Nohria, he is the coauthor of In Their Time and Paths to Power, both published by Harvard Business Review Press.

David A. Thomas is President of Morehouse College. He previously served as Dean of Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and as the H. Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. His research addresses issues related to leadership, executive development, and cultural diversity in organizations, and his book, Breaking Through, coauthored with fellow HBS professor John J. Gabarro, is the standard on how minorities become executives.

Visit the authors at:
Laura Morgan Roberts: lauramorganroberts.com/index.htm, twitter.com/alignmentquest
Anthony J. Mayo: hbs.edu
David A. Thomas: twitter.com/morehouseprez