Diversifying HBS's Case Collection

15 Jun 2021

Diversifying HBS's Case Collection

School implements new systems and approaches

Re: Caleb Bradford (MBA 2021); Anne Plachta (MBA 2021); Jan W. Rivkin (C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration); Janice H. Hammond (Jesse Philips Professor of Manufacturing); Reshmaan N. Hussam (Ogunlesi Family Associate Professor of Business Administration); Mihir A. Desai (Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance); By: Jennifer Gillespie

Topics: Information-Cases Education-Curriculum and Courses Demographics-Diversity

HBS is committed to developing more cases featuring Black, Latinx, and Asian protagonists to mirror the diversity of the HBS classroom and society as a whole. Photo by Pillay Productions

Cases are a cornerstone of Harvard Business School’s pedagogy. In developing its Racial Equity Plan (REP), the School has recognized that, historically, too few of the protagonists in HBS’s case library come from underrepresented communities.

“When our cases don’t feature the full range of human talent, we fail all of our students,” says Jan Rivkin, the senior associate dean and chair of the MBA Program and the C. Roland Christensen Professor of Business Administration. “We fail our students from underrepresented groups because we don’t show them all the ways they can lead. As one of my students said, ‘If I can’t see it, it’s hard for me to be it.’ And we fail our other students because we don’t show them the many sources of amazing talent in the world. We put them at risk of overlooking talent.”

“When our cases don’t feature the full range of human talent, we fail all of our students.”

—JAN RIVKIN, SENIOR ASSOCIATE DEAN

With the REP, the School has made a commitment to developing more cases featuring Black and African American protagonists to mirror the diversity of the HBS classroom and society as a whole. This is the first step in broadening the range of cases featuring protagonists from the full array of underrepresented and marginalized populations. The goal is to use these cases for discussions that will help students become business leaders who better understand the challenges various groups face and appreciate what each person brings to the table.

“A core general management skill today and tomorrow is the ability to make the most out of human differences,” Rivkin notes. “Students are going out into a world marked by vast and wonderful diversity—in race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, political views, religion, class, nationality, and other dimensions. Business leaders need to be able to take those differences and turn them into sources of imagination, creativity, and innovation.”

Diverse Protagonists
As the School was developing its REP, students also expressed a desire to have more cases with diverse protagonists. The “Juneteenth Pledge”—proposed in June 2020 by MBA Student Association copresidents Annie Plachta (MBA 2021) and Caleb Bradford (MBA/MPP 2021)—encouraged faculty members to commit to write cases with a Black and African American protagonist by this year’s Juneteenth (June 19), a day marking the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States.

Since July 1, 2020, to further the development of more cases featuring Black, Latinx, and Asian protagonists, HBS’s Case Research and Writing Group (CRG) has helped faculty members source case leads beyond traditional networks. With the support of the Global Initiative and Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, the CRG has created a new case tracking system to help match faculty with potential protagonists and chart the number of cases in progress. And to improve data collection, the School instituted a new, voluntary, self-identification form that case protagonists are asked to complete.

“The School and our faculty are making an all-out effort to lay the foundations for a greater range of cases, both in terms of protagonists and topics, and institute more comprehensive data collection,” says Carin-Isabel Knoop, executive director of HBS’s CRG. “Our team has developed implicit bias training for case writers, and we’re helping our colleagues develop systems and the infrastructure to understand and track the dimensions of diversity we want to include in our cases.”

ADVANCING RACIAL EQUITY

ADVANCING RACIAL EQUITY

Because this information has not been collected over the years, there are no historical data points available to determine what percentage of HBS’s earlier cases feature underrepresented populations. Knoop estimates that in the last year, faculty members have completed more than 70 cases with Black or African American protagonists or cases focused on matters of race in America, with an additional 50 underway. Faculty members also have completed more than 90 cases (plus 20 still in process) featuring protagonists who are Latinx/Hispanic, Asian or Asian American/Pacific Islander, or Native American or other Indigenous people [see related story].

Partnering with the HBS African-American Alumni Association was key to generating many case leads and cases. In the future, a new academic collaboration with the OneTen—an initiative to hire and advance one million Black Americans during the next 10 years—may give HBS faculty additional case-writing opportunities.

Sharing Scholarship Broadly
HBS cases and related materials also have been written recently that examine historical aspects of racism in the United States, such “The Tulsa Massacre and the Call for Reparations,” coauthored by Mihir Desai, the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance [see related story]. A PDF of this written case, as well as of the note “African American Inequality in the United States,” coauthored by Jan Hammond, the senior associate dean for Culture and Community at HBS and Jesse Philips Professor of Manufacturing, are available for free. These materials and a free PDF of another written case, “Race and Mass Incarceration in the United States,” coauthored by Assistant Professor Reshmaan Hussam, are offered through Harvard Business Publishing (HBP), which is disseminating research and course materials that advance racial equity, and producing content and learning experiences relevant to racial equity in multiple formats. On the HBP website, recommended cases with diverse protagonists and other materials can be accessed for further exploration of racial equity-related issues.

“HBS faculty members write most of the cases taught in business schools around the world. That gives us a tremendous opportunity and responsibility in terms of promoting racial equity,” says Rivkin. “We can expand our research related to diversity and inclusion, write cases that feature the full array of protagonists and issues, and thereby help students, educators, and practitioners understand pathways toward equity. We have a long way to go, but I feel we now have momentum.”