How Corporate “Diversity Washers” Spin Investors

Corporate America has emphasized its commitment to DEI, yet Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor Emeritus David Larcker finds that many firms are “diversity washing” — misrepresenting diversity initiatives to gloss over actual diversity data.

In a recent paper coauthored with Edward Watts, PhD ’20, of the Yale School of Management, Larcker identifies a “misalignment between what is reported and what is practiced” on the DEI front. That mismatch, he says, “can mislead investors and stakeholders, causing the misallocation of capital.”

Read the article here.