“Who Leads?” When Governance Diversity Is Not Enough

The End of DEI

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is one of the most polarizing issues in business and society. Advocates claim that DEI enhances fairness, while critics argue it undermines meritocracy. The problems often stem from the practice of DEI—reducing it to demographic diversity—rather than its principle. This paper proposes an alternative framework—Potential, Synergy, and Inclusion—that preserves DEI's objectives while addressing its weaknesses. Potential emphasizes recruiting individuals for their capacity to create future value rather than past achievements. Demographics can be informative about an applicant's trajectory, but many other aspects of their background are also relevant. Synergy focuses on building teams with complementary skills and perspectives. One such synergy arises from cognitive diversity, for which demographics are only a partial source. Inclusion enables employees to voice ideas, challenge norms, and overcome structural frictions. While DEI is viewed as advancing only minority groups and primarily aligned with one side of the political spectrum, the proposed approach seeks to grow the pie for the benefit of all.

Bias and Fairness in LLM-Based Recruitment: A Systematic Review

As large language models emerge as critical infrastructure in labor markets, questions about their governance touch on some of the most contested issues at the intersection of AI development, complex sociotechnical systems and emerging technology regulation. Recruitment tools powered by these models are now widely deployed across industries and they raise urgent concerns about intersectional algorithmic discrimination—patterns of unequal treatment that remain invisible so long as auditors examine only one protected attribute at a time. Trained on historical hiring data, these systems tend to reproduce and in some cases deepen, discriminatory patterns that cut across gender, race and other protected characteristics simultaneously. Two research communities bear on this problem without yet speaking to each other adequately: the fairness-in-NLP literature and the human-centered AI (HCAI) governance literature have each grown substantially, but largely in parallel. To examine where they diverge and why, we conducted a PRISMA 2020-guided systematic literature review drawing on 82 studies selected from 493 records retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science. Grounded theory coding and a concept matrix organize the findings around four thematic axes: bias sources across the hiring pipeline, formal fairness metrics and their mathematical limits, debiasing techniques and governance frameworks. What the concept matrix reveals is, above all, a structural disconnect. Technical studies rarely engage with HCAI design principles governance-oriented work rarely operationalizes the technical limitations that the empirical literature has documented in detail. Five evidence-based design recommendations follow from the analysis; a particularly urgent recommendation concerns the development of non-Western fairness benchmarks. A targeted research agenda addresses intersectional auditing and LLM-specific debiasing as the two highest priority open problems.

Beyond Representation: When Do Women Directors Help Prevent Corporate Social Irresponsibility?

We investigate whether women's board representation mitigates corporate social irresponsibility (CSIR), defined as exposure to ESG controversies. Using a panel of 205 French listed firms from 2006 to 2024 and dynamic panel estimation, we find that board gender diversity is associated with lower CSIR across alternative measures of female representation. However, this effect is not uniform. Female directors reduce CSIR mainly when firms are financially strong and have slack resources, suggesting that stakeholder‐oriented monitoring must be supported by the capacity to invest in preventive systems. Conversely, dominant ownership and CEO power weaken this relationship, indicating that board autonomy and deliberative space condition the effectiveness of female directors. Mechanism‐consistent evidence shows that women's board representation is associated with stronger sustainability‐oriented governance and higher environmental‐social performance, especially social performance. Overall, board gender diversity reduces CSIR when representation, resources, and governance conditions allow female directors to exercise influence.

What is society?

Board Inclusion Beyond Representation: Intellectual Structure, Ethical Foundations, and Future Research Directions

Despite growing its diversity in corporate boardrooms, minority directors may remain marginalized when their representation is not accompanied by meaningful participation and influence. This study clarifies the distinction between symbolic diversity and authentic inclusion to explain why diversity-oriented governance reforms may fail to empower board members. The study adopts a three-stage review approach. First, a systematic literature review was conducted to identify and screen 192 relevant articles. Second, a bibliometric analysis to map the field's thematic evolution. Third, a qualitative content analysis of influential works to identify core concepts and research gaps. The findings show that existing research often treats demographic representation as a proxy for inclusion, while giving limited attention to voice, power-sharing, participation, and procedural fairness. Based on these findings, this study proposes a framework organized around three dimensions: drivers of board inclusion, boardroom processes, and corporate and governance outcomes. Board inclusion should be understood as a dynamic governance process rather than a compositional outcome. Authentic inclusion depends on psychological empowerment and procedural fairness. This study encourages researchers, boards, and regulators to move beyond representation-based indicators by developing inclusion metrics that are able to capture participation quality, influence, and fairness in board decision-making.

Who sustains the Pact? Legitimacy and funding in racial equity

This teaching case examines the challenge faced by Gael Trigueiro, executive leader of the Pacto pela Promoção da Equidade Racial (Pact for the Promotion of Racial Equity), a civil society organization (CSO) that brings together corporations, philanthropy, academia, and actors from the anti-racist ecosystem around the racial equity agenda in Brazil. Over just a few years, the Pact consolidated its engagement with major organizations, structuring the Racial ESG Protocol as a tool for driving corporate practices, generating data, and mobilizing affirmative action initiatives. Despite this progress, the initiative’s growth has begun to strain its organizational structure and its financial sustainability model. The case invites reflection on how CSOs can raise funds and expand their institutional capacity without compromising their independence, political legitimacy, or the trust of the actors that underpins the public credibility of their work.