‘White Standard of Leadership’ – Americans expect business leaders to be white, Duke study finds

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — Recent polling data about which presidential candidate would be the better “commander in chief” is lopsided in favor of John McCain. Does Barack Obama’s race have anything to do with that?

A new – and disturbing – study from Duke University about America’s expectations of business leaders ( “The White Standard of Leadership” ) may help answer that question.

Americans simply expect business leaders to be white. Further, they expect white leaders to be successful. And this bias is found across racial boundaries.

So say researchers at Duke, the University of Toronto and Northwestern University. In other words, prejudice remains when it comes to beliefs about who should occupy the executive suite.

“Our results challenge a common explanation for racial bias –- that people who are white give preferential treatment to other people who are white,” said study co-author Geoffrey Leonardelli of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “Our finding that Americans of all races associate successful leadership with being white demonstrates just how embedded this bias can be.”

I don’t know about you, but I find this “embedded” bias to be deeply saddening. As we near the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, it’s clear that many Americans across all races still judge by the color of one’s skin – even if subconsciously.

Ashleigh Shelby Rosette, an assistant professor at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, led the study. Its findings were published in the July issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology. The purpose of the study, which included a variety of experiments, was to learn whether race affects people’s beliefs about leader effectiveness and potential.

“People are evaluated more positively when they meet these prototypical expectations,” Rosette said in a video interview published at YouTube.

Leaders are judged based on intelligence, goal-orientation, charisma, decisiveness – and, as the study found, race.

Rosette, who earned a doctorate at Northwestern and focuses on diversity in organizations, conflict resolution and negotiation strategies, called the findings “disheartening” and said that changing expectations to be color-blind will be ‘tough.” She insisted, though, that it “can be done” with “commitment.”

All of us have biases, she conceded. But understand this: Other research found that leaders fitting that prototype would be evaluated more favorably than those who did not, even if the leaders’ performances were identical. The Duke-led team chose to focus on whether “being white” was part of that prototype.

Four experiments including 943 graduate and undergraduate students made up the study. Leaders were judged based on fictitious newspaper stories and performance reviews.

The same presumption of “whiteness” was found even in organizations that were identified as 80 percent minority, but a similar attitude was not found in evaluations of non-leaders, the researchers said.

The race of the students also did not affect their attitudes, the researchers added.

White leaders also were judged to be more effective even when the race of leaders in organizations was disclosed and the minority leaders achieved similar success.

Sad. Very sad.

America remains a work in progress, especially when it comes to race.

“The irony is that the very individuals who are disadvantaged by the white standard are those in the best position to change it,” Leonardelli said in a press release about the study. “Whether or not Obama will be president is for the American people to decide. However, electing a president who is not white could help to chip away at the white standard.”