Racial minorities in strategic leadership: An integrative literature review and future research roadmap

Abstract

Bolstered by their slow but increasing representation, racial minority strategic leaders have started to capture significant research attention across disciplines. We review this emergent literature, synthesizing and integrating the research progress to date across the 147 articles we identified. Our review highlights a range of factors that have been found to influence racial minority representation in strategic leadership positions, including factors at the firm, board, individual, and environmental levels. We also summarize how such representation has been found to affect firm outcomes (e.g., firm performance, innovation) as well as the careers of the racial minority leaders (e.g., compensation, promotion). Despite the many advances made in the literature, we assert that the research on racial minority strategic leadership is at a critical juncture. Specifically, we call attention to three major challenges that may threaten research contributions if not addressed: (1) strengthening methodology – constructs, measurement, and analyses, (2) fortifying theoretical underpinnings, and (3) strengthening generalizability of research findings with a deeper consideration of context. Finally, we offer a roadmap for future research, including insights for addressing the three challenges we identified and suggestions for new and broader research directions that we believe will meaningfully advance the field.