A brokerage-based measure of organizational diversity and exploratory analysis of regulatory violations among Fortune 100 corporations

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, we introduce a straightforward method to measure organizational diversity that utilizes the importance of social ties. In developing our single-mode brokerage-based measure of diversity, two themes are central. The first stems from the work that has emphasized the benefits of increased diversity for organizational decision-making, while the second draws on the insights from social network analyses to consider the roles that individuals play in connecting individuals not already affiliated. The paper is organized into three sections: the first contextualizes our measure within the work that has theorized the importance of brokerage, homophily, and organizational diversity; the second describes and outlines the steps for deconstructing brokerage roles that is necessary to generate our measure of organizational diversity; and the third contributes to the literature by applying our brokerage-based measures of diversity to an exploration of whether increased levels of demographic diversity is related to greater corporate responsibility in 2005 as indicated by lower numbers of regulatory violations among the Fortune 100.