How close are Harvard Business Review and Harvard, the university? Because timing of this article is odd with Harvard, the University is being sued for discriminating against Asian candidates.
And the article's conclusion calling out for more work towards inclusion of Asian Americans in management workforce seems a bit apologetic. But maybe I am wrong and reading this incorrectly.
You are absolutely correct, there have been lots of news reports[1] about the partiality against Asians in the university, and this is most likely a PR exercise to counter that.
It seems highly unlikely that Harvard University would risk getting the entire organization involved in a lawsuit dealing specifically with Harvard College admissions.
I found this genuinely surprising and saddening. Genuinely, some of the most simultaneous competent, friendly and amusing colleagues I have had were Asian. One possible suggestion: do characteristics which signal confidence and competence vary across US and Asian management cultures? Do Asian managers downplay their strengths because of Asian cultural norms?
It's a difficult generalization. Showing confidence might equate to arrogance in some cultures where confidence is acceptable only after showing results.
You’re starting to touch the issue, but IMO, not quite. Allow me to present a somewhat controversial approach.
Considering the US only: at the risk of extreme and borderline stereotypical generalizations - if one looks at the history of immigration into the country - the Asian immigrants have largely consisted of Chinese laborers around the gold rush, Indian truck drivers and motel/cornershop owners in the early - mid 1900’s. They came to make a living in somewhat decent conditions. Both lines of work require you to be reasonably honest, keep your head down and do the job. It can be presumed these were the values these Asian parents inculcated into their children - who saw the pathway to their version of the American dream as a relatively low risk SME. The Asian immigrants since the 1960s have been largely STEM people - academic high performers, given the nature of university admissions and the visa process. STEM high performers - as individuals, and presumably as parents too, tend to be intelligent but sensible (risk-rational), belive in very hard work, tend not to oversocialize, to not brag a whole lot, and tend to prioritize knowledge/lifestyle over blind ambition and obscene wealth. None of those traits are directly conducive to being a top exec, but rather to a job like VP - engg.
An excellent case in point - as another commenter also mentioned, if you go to Asian cities, you’ll find exactly the sort of “persona” you’d find in a typical Western exec, often exaggerated to an even higher level. But that persona hasn’t made it to US shores, instead choosing to make it big in their own place.
In contrast, many of the earliest “white” immigrants came here first for ideological reasons, and later driven by ambitions of striking it big, and often by delusions of grandeur, and were significantly less risk-averse than either groups of Asian immigrants I mentioned earlier. Of course there were plenty of regular folks too.
So I would submit that instead of looking at just Asians/whites making it to top exec, one should look at 1) professional backgrounds of the parents of top execs, 2) fraction of those with highest academic/test scores making it to top exec. Of course, to be a successful top exec, the need for “top” academic scores is outweighed by a host of other qualifications. Asians in whom these “other” qualifications are found in ample measure often do make it big in their home countries, but might make terrible immigrants to the US.
Nor any Asian country whose natives are perceived in the West as being meek/humble or whatever else.
It is just that most immigrants (in the last 3-4 decades) to the US happen to be a self selected group meeting certain stringent criteria of acheivement in one area, which left, in most cases, little room for a “broader” personality, i.e. high acheiving STEM grads.
This is the problem. You assume the situation is justified and try to find an explanation for it. Would you submit this kind of theories if the article is talking about any other groups?
You’re conflating two different things - 1) justification and 2) explanation, and with that misinterpreting the gist of my post.
Just because it has a valid explanation doesn’t mean it is just, nor that it should continue. I was trying to give one possible background for why things are they way they are - not the way they should be.
The situation is starting to change, but it simply cannot happen overnight, the best case scenario for sustainable change is a couple of generations of sustained effort from all sides. Look at how the Italian and Irish immigrants went from pariahs to normal. The Chinese have gone from manual labor to solid middle class in 2-3 generations.
And I’d be happy to submit whatever kind of explanation I think might fit the facts of any situation, regardless of group.
The change in headline from the original article is misleading. The article gives data that Asian American are under-represented in management across a few professional fields, but do not (nor does it promise to) go into explaining why that's happening. :\",
The higher up you go the more you need connectiond and informal relationships to progress.what I have seen so far in corporate america tells me a lot of people(especially older ones) still make friends based on ethnicity and gender. Of course I am only stating my subjective perception.
They should audit application of meritocracy and use apparent lack of diversity only as a potential symptom not as the illness that needs curing (unless promotions shouldn't happen based on merit?). Like, "who applied for this internal position and who had the best objective merit?"
First, you would need to be able to define merit. I don't see people even try to define it nor any discussions about it, organizationally we are just not there yet.
But anyway, promoting people in to new / different roles based on their present performance says little about how they will perform in the new / different role.
And then there's that concern that, in many cases, the CEO may not make a lot of difference.
I don't think it is possible to objectively measure merit nor accurately guess who will perform well in next role. However, it is possible to be more accurate or less accurate in measuring either. Meaning, it is possible to be better, even if better does not mean perfect.
I believe that if we spent more time trying to describe merit, overall work culture would become more fair and we would move closer to meritocracy. It could even lead to more effective workplace as incentives would align more with what is actually needed. Right now, it seems to be pretty random too often and based more on impressions then on anything factual.
I have seen multiple times that what was rewarded was not what was needed the most for a project. Or literally people who actually have real results and successfully run project (negotiated requirements/time, made larger estimates, kept it organized, asked for what they needed soon enough, customer happy in the end) talked about as less good then people who run messy projects - because basically messy project seemed to involve heroic effort at times and they had fun war stories.
It is like someone up thread said - the upper you go the more it matters who you are friend with and who you drink beer with - it is not an evil conspiracy, just results of people making impressions based decisions instead of through out ones. Reasonable definition of merit would help - to steer toward people who had shown organizational skill previously.
>what I have seen so far in corporate america tells me a lot of people(especially older ones) still make friends based on ethnicity and gender
Corporate America? This is in all kinds of America (and probably all over the world). From statistics I've read (don't have the link now), the average white person for example has much less black friends and acquaintances that would be representative by percentage of population in their area. And vice versa of course. Same for men having male vs female friends (and, again, vice versa).
We're social animals, but we prefer to associate with people similar to us -- and even when it comes to arts, and media preferences and hobbies and so on, gender and ethnicity play a role.
And of course there's the demographics: there are very clear white and black neighbourhoods for example -- this obviously extends to the social circle, e.g. neighbourhoods, other kids you know, etc. That said, severals programs to "fix" this, like busing and forced breakups of communities, didn't work.
Not everyone is like that. Shared beliefs and common goals are a lot of times more important but people still see each other as different even though they were born in the same hospitals and went to the same schools and sports events all their lives due to appearances. People distrust different especially when the stakes are high.
"who applied for this internal position and who had the best objective merit?"
What's the best objective merit for being a good manager/exec? While I certainly believe that, to a first approximation, engineers should lead engineers, I've also found that being a great engineer is at best very weakly correlated to being a great manager. In fact a couple of the worst managers I've worked with where people who where promoted 'on merit' into positions they where completely unable to manage.
Another reason for Asians not advancing along the career ladder is that most of them are down-to-earth and not interested in flaunting money. Most are content with earning enough to make a livelihood with comforts, luxuries isn't what most of them care about. Again, I know this is probably the characteristic of most people in general, not just Asians. I just feel that Asians with this nature are more in number than westerners.
I think there is a different between fluanted wealth individuals and careers individuals. Those that flaunt wealth, I have seen regardless of race, are those that had it easy. These people tend to be second-generation rich or got rich fast. Off course, this is a huge generalization.
1. Those who flaunt are in the minority, but make the most impact. You are looking at endless flaunted wealth in few cities like Mumbai and Bangalore, but not at the infinite villages in states like Maharashtra, MP, UP, Bihar, etc. where most people still struggle to make a livelihood.
2. Its easy to flaunt wealth in India than more developed countries because of ills like corruption, illiteracy, lack of social media and awareness, etc. If an American flaunts wealth, probably he/she will easily catch the attention of social media and the FBI/IRS/etc. But in India, nobody cares and the institutions are quite corrupt and easily bend to the will of the rich and wealthy.
Asia covers loads of countries. I was surprised how focussed my colleagues from Singapore are regarding advancing, salary, being materialistic. My colleagues from Philippines want to earn more to help out their family, quite different behaviour compared to Singapore. My Chinese colleagues seem to think they'll advance through better education (e.g. going for an MBA by paying it themselves). I've seen some similarities across people from the same country; but across a continent they're quite different.
I love how, usually for "politically correct" reasons, the term Asian is used (usually as a cop out) to refer to several different cultures and ethnicities.
There's good reason why the term Asian seems to misplaced - it used to called oriental before it became politically incorrect and people weren't left with a good term to use. Asian became the default despite it not being a perfect fit for the outgoing term.
According to the EEOC (which seems to be the source for this data), Asians include: "All persons having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, or the Pacific Islands."
Yes I always thought this is weird. For me in the UK, "Asian" always referred to (for better or worse) Indian, Pakistani, and Bengali up until somewhere in the mid-2000s I think (??) when I was told by someone that "The O-word" is a racist term (I am starting to sound like my grandparents here!)
Sorry to anyone I offended up until then.
I'd prefer it if we just dumped this concept of needing to put everyone into a generalised named-group anyway. I am just me, regardless of my gender/ethnicity/age/favourite ice cream flavour/sexuality/politics. Articles pointing out how "my" group are failing at this or over-represented at that or that it is official "Named-Group Month" are not helpful in my opinion - they just serve to divide and highlight differences between people. We need to treat everyone equally by rooting out bias (conscious or otherwise) and I dont think this sort of thing helps us to reach that goal.
I'm genuinely curious - what's the "o-word"? Orient? How is that racist? English is not my first language and I have never came across Orient being used in a derogatory or offensive way - unless of course there's some other word I don't know about.
Referring to the region as the "Orient" isn't really a problematic term, even if it might be seen as a bit archaic. But using the term "oriental" to refer to the people from that region does have a disparaging and pejorative history in American English usage. Outside of the US the term is considered less disparaging and more just considered archaic.
In the UK it has been considered racist for a while I believe. At least that is what I have been led to believe.
I am not sure who "decides" (presumably the people who are called by that name) when this happens, but there was a distinct point for me (although I cant remember precisely when that was) where I was informed that I cant use that term any more.
Bit of a shock to be politely told by someone, when up until that point you had no idea. You feel bad - you had no idea.
If you check the source for the data you'll se that they define "Asian" as "All persons having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, or the Pacific Islands."
The title of the article refers to Asian Americans which makes me think most of these are of Chinese background (I could be wrong). Neither China, India are mentioned though, Japan is mentioned only in a comment.
For most Americans, "Asian" people are generally Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Thai, Burmese, Indonesian, Malaysian, Filipino/Filipina, and maybe one or two other groups, but generally not Indian or Pakistani people ("South Asian") or people from many Central Asian countries.
There is a strange yet important issue with some people who will never advance to Exec level due to childhood experiences with abuse. Extremely serious trauma could be detected by Hogan tests that are used by many companies for Exec candidates. Such Trauma would make people break down in stressful situations.
This is a harmful way of thinking, unfortunately on the rise lately. Ostensibly to promote fairness and diversity, it encourages us to think more about arbitrary racial categories, hereditary traits, disabilities, etc. Those things about people we were starting to consider less and less significant, we are being encouraged instead to be hyper-aware of.
Whoever decides the categories has the power to decide whether your organization is compliant. For example, suppose by a miracle that your organization is "correctly diverse" with regard to some set of blessed ethnic groups, hereditary traits, disabilities, etc. Well, your organization is almost certainly not compliant with regard to the left-handed, those who can roll their tongues, those with connected earlobes, those with flat feet, etc. Maybe you have the "correct" number of black people, but do you have the correct number of gay black people? Do you have the correct number of gay black women? How do you feel about sexual orientation or autism being blessed categories, but not, say, albinism, hyperhidrosis, or Marfan syndrome?
As a practical matter, how do you suppose someone would show that they were, say, partly descended from Native Americans? Certificate from a genetics testing lab? Are we going to carry cards in our wallets?
That's not the future I want. Your body is not the important part of you. The important part of you is your mind. I won't help build a hyper-body-focused society.
In the future I envision, nobody cares about anybody's supposed ethnicity. Nobody keeps spreadsheets about it. Nobody specifically considers body attributes during college admissions, or hiring decisions, or really, ever, because it's just not important. Let's not support any efforts to make these things more important.
Whilst you're correct that we shouldn't be worrying about body attributes at all, and I agree with your vision of the future, we still need a way to get from where we are now to where we want to be.
In the meantime the best we've got is to try and make sure we've got some evidence of diversity.
> we still need a way to get from where we are now to where we want to be.
It has been happening already. It's as if we've been gradually smoking less and less, and then a movement comes along that tells us that in order to quit, we actually need to smoke more for the foreseeable future.
>> we still need a way to get from where we are now to where we want to be.
>It has been happening already.
Citation needed. I think evidence suggests that we've been getting from where we have been to where we want to be precisely because of these kinds of efforts, and the pushback against these efforts has been there at every step of the way.
As long as someone finds it necessary to discriminate between any humans (for example “Afroamerican”, “Asian”, “Hispanic”, “White”), instead of treating them all as humans, you will not get rid of discrimination, because by definition, to start naming groups is to discriminate. The very verb to discriminate is a synonym for distinguish.
That doesn’t change or invalidate what I wrote: to discriminate against still means to distinguish. Simply grouping humans is already going too far in discriminating against them, no matter the conotation.
Any one who has worked with Indians and Chinese wouldn't be surprised by this (i'm talking about fresh of the boat types of asians here - those born here should be fine.
In my experience executives win their positions by...
(A) being a founding member of the company and accepting high amounts of risk
(B) founding and then selling a company to another company and winning the executive role that way
(C) (the standard way) grinding it out for a very long time in an internal role
(D) being recognized and promoted very soon by an illuminated management that rapidly understands they are very high potential
(E) perhaps to appease an investor, family member or some other politically driven choice to give that person some inflated title
The reason Silicon Valley imports so many Asian workers is that they are deliberately selecting for obedience, Visa / immigrant indentured servents or want mindless crank turners to do some job no one else wants (here, maintain this sharepoint server for the next ten years) and be not expected to go anywhere.
Let’s say you are a hiring manager and you have the following two choices:
(A) independent, agressive and creative employee who may argue with you, leave if you piss them off and generally do only a mixture of what you want them to do and what they feel like doing
(B) Someone who will simply do what they are told and never, ever argue or leave
Many hiring managers select for B in my experience. These are weak managers but they are very common.
This may predispose the characteristics of Asian workers imported into the valley to be the non entrepreneurial ones.
To be an executive you have to take risks, you have to take stands, you have to be agressive. A visa worker cannot do these things out of fear.
More interesting, I believe, is the question: why do so many Indians advance to the executive level relative to East Asians, when both are similarly famous for academic excellence and strict upbringing?
Microsoft CEO is Indian. As is Google and Adobe’s. As are Nokia and Global Foundries and Pepsi and MasterCard and Deloitte and SanDisk and and and. Nvidia CEO and founder is Taiwanese.
It’s not like those are small players
You can find examples of executives of all races, religions and sexualities. The article points out that Asian Americans are less likely to rise to exec level, not that they literally don't do it at all.
67 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 82.2 ms ] threadSo I guess I didn't do my research.
And the article's conclusion calling out for more work towards inclusion of Asian Americans in management workforce seems a bit apologetic. But maybe I am wrong and reading this incorrectly.
[1] http://www.newsweek.com/harvard-opinion-990958
Considering the US only: at the risk of extreme and borderline stereotypical generalizations - if one looks at the history of immigration into the country - the Asian immigrants have largely consisted of Chinese laborers around the gold rush, Indian truck drivers and motel/cornershop owners in the early - mid 1900’s. They came to make a living in somewhat decent conditions. Both lines of work require you to be reasonably honest, keep your head down and do the job. It can be presumed these were the values these Asian parents inculcated into their children - who saw the pathway to their version of the American dream as a relatively low risk SME. The Asian immigrants since the 1960s have been largely STEM people - academic high performers, given the nature of university admissions and the visa process. STEM high performers - as individuals, and presumably as parents too, tend to be intelligent but sensible (risk-rational), belive in very hard work, tend not to oversocialize, to not brag a whole lot, and tend to prioritize knowledge/lifestyle over blind ambition and obscene wealth. None of those traits are directly conducive to being a top exec, but rather to a job like VP - engg.
An excellent case in point - as another commenter also mentioned, if you go to Asian cities, you’ll find exactly the sort of “persona” you’d find in a typical Western exec, often exaggerated to an even higher level. But that persona hasn’t made it to US shores, instead choosing to make it big in their own place.
In contrast, many of the earliest “white” immigrants came here first for ideological reasons, and later driven by ambitions of striking it big, and often by delusions of grandeur, and were significantly less risk-averse than either groups of Asian immigrants I mentioned earlier. Of course there were plenty of regular folks too.
So I would submit that instead of looking at just Asians/whites making it to top exec, one should look at 1) professional backgrounds of the parents of top execs, 2) fraction of those with highest academic/test scores making it to top exec. Of course, to be a successful top exec, the need for “top” academic scores is outweighed by a host of other qualifications. Asians in whom these “other” qualifications are found in ample measure often do make it big in their home countries, but might make terrible immigrants to the US.
It is just that most immigrants (in the last 3-4 decades) to the US happen to be a self selected group meeting certain stringent criteria of acheivement in one area, which left, in most cases, little room for a “broader” personality, i.e. high acheiving STEM grads.
Just because it has a valid explanation doesn’t mean it is just, nor that it should continue. I was trying to give one possible background for why things are they way they are - not the way they should be.
The situation is starting to change, but it simply cannot happen overnight, the best case scenario for sustainable change is a couple of generations of sustained effort from all sides. Look at how the Italian and Irish immigrants went from pariahs to normal. The Chinese have gone from manual labor to solid middle class in 2-3 generations.
And I’d be happy to submit whatever kind of explanation I think might fit the facts of any situation, regardless of group.
They should audit application of meritocracy and use apparent lack of diversity only as a potential symptom not as the illness that needs curing (unless promotions shouldn't happen based on merit?). Like, "who applied for this internal position and who had the best objective merit?"
But anyway, promoting people in to new / different roles based on their present performance says little about how they will perform in the new / different role.
And then there's that concern that, in many cases, the CEO may not make a lot of difference.
I believe that if we spent more time trying to describe merit, overall work culture would become more fair and we would move closer to meritocracy. It could even lead to more effective workplace as incentives would align more with what is actually needed. Right now, it seems to be pretty random too often and based more on impressions then on anything factual.
I have seen multiple times that what was rewarded was not what was needed the most for a project. Or literally people who actually have real results and successfully run project (negotiated requirements/time, made larger estimates, kept it organized, asked for what they needed soon enough, customer happy in the end) talked about as less good then people who run messy projects - because basically messy project seemed to involve heroic effort at times and they had fun war stories.
It is like someone up thread said - the upper you go the more it matters who you are friend with and who you drink beer with - it is not an evil conspiracy, just results of people making impressions based decisions instead of through out ones. Reasonable definition of merit would help - to steer toward people who had shown organizational skill previously.
Corporate America? This is in all kinds of America (and probably all over the world). From statistics I've read (don't have the link now), the average white person for example has much less black friends and acquaintances that would be representative by percentage of population in their area. And vice versa of course. Same for men having male vs female friends (and, again, vice versa).
We're social animals, but we prefer to associate with people similar to us -- and even when it comes to arts, and media preferences and hobbies and so on, gender and ethnicity play a role.
And of course there's the demographics: there are very clear white and black neighbourhoods for example -- this obviously extends to the social circle, e.g. neighbourhoods, other kids you know, etc. That said, severals programs to "fix" this, like busing and forced breakups of communities, didn't work.
http://prospect.org/article/moving-hood-mixed-success-integr...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/21/racial-segrega...
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/welcome-neighbors-new-evi...
What's the best objective merit for being a good manager/exec? While I certainly believe that, to a first approximation, engineers should lead engineers, I've also found that being a great engineer is at best very weakly correlated to being a great manager. In fact a couple of the worst managers I've worked with where people who where promoted 'on merit' into positions they where completely unable to manage.
1. Those who flaunt are in the minority, but make the most impact. You are looking at endless flaunted wealth in few cities like Mumbai and Bangalore, but not at the infinite villages in states like Maharashtra, MP, UP, Bihar, etc. where most people still struggle to make a livelihood.
2. Its easy to flaunt wealth in India than more developed countries because of ills like corruption, illiteracy, lack of social media and awareness, etc. If an American flaunts wealth, probably he/she will easily catch the attention of social media and the FBI/IRS/etc. But in India, nobody cares and the institutions are quite corrupt and easily bend to the will of the rich and wealthy.
also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle
This is the biggest continent on Earth after all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient
Sorry to anyone I offended up until then.
I'd prefer it if we just dumped this concept of needing to put everyone into a generalised named-group anyway. I am just me, regardless of my gender/ethnicity/age/favourite ice cream flavour/sexuality/politics. Articles pointing out how "my" group are failing at this or over-represented at that or that it is official "Named-Group Month" are not helpful in my opinion - they just serve to divide and highlight differences between people. We need to treat everyone equally by rooting out bias (conscious or otherwise) and I dont think this sort of thing helps us to reach that goal.
I am not sure who "decides" (presumably the people who are called by that name) when this happens, but there was a distinct point for me (although I cant remember precisely when that was) where I was informed that I cant use that term any more.
Bit of a shock to be politely told by someone, when up until that point you had no idea. You feel bad - you had no idea.
The title of the article refers to Asian Americans which makes me think most of these are of Chinese background (I could be wrong). Neither China, India are mentioned though, Japan is mentioned only in a comment.
Whoever decides the categories has the power to decide whether your organization is compliant. For example, suppose by a miracle that your organization is "correctly diverse" with regard to some set of blessed ethnic groups, hereditary traits, disabilities, etc. Well, your organization is almost certainly not compliant with regard to the left-handed, those who can roll their tongues, those with connected earlobes, those with flat feet, etc. Maybe you have the "correct" number of black people, but do you have the correct number of gay black people? Do you have the correct number of gay black women? How do you feel about sexual orientation or autism being blessed categories, but not, say, albinism, hyperhidrosis, or Marfan syndrome?
As a practical matter, how do you suppose someone would show that they were, say, partly descended from Native Americans? Certificate from a genetics testing lab? Are we going to carry cards in our wallets?
That's not the future I want. Your body is not the important part of you. The important part of you is your mind. I won't help build a hyper-body-focused society.
In the future I envision, nobody cares about anybody's supposed ethnicity. Nobody keeps spreadsheets about it. Nobody specifically considers body attributes during college admissions, or hiring decisions, or really, ever, because it's just not important. Let's not support any efforts to make these things more important.
In the meantime the best we've got is to try and make sure we've got some evidence of diversity.
It has been happening already. It's as if we've been gradually smoking less and less, and then a movement comes along that tells us that in order to quit, we actually need to smoke more for the foreseeable future.
>It has been happening already.
Citation needed. I think evidence suggests that we've been getting from where we have been to where we want to be precisely because of these kinds of efforts, and the pushback against these efforts has been there at every step of the way.
Or a more serious explanation is that there is little data here because surveys lump "asians" together.
(A) being a founding member of the company and accepting high amounts of risk
(B) founding and then selling a company to another company and winning the executive role that way
(C) (the standard way) grinding it out for a very long time in an internal role
(D) being recognized and promoted very soon by an illuminated management that rapidly understands they are very high potential
(E) perhaps to appease an investor, family member or some other politically driven choice to give that person some inflated title
The reason Silicon Valley imports so many Asian workers is that they are deliberately selecting for obedience, Visa / immigrant indentured servents or want mindless crank turners to do some job no one else wants (here, maintain this sharepoint server for the next ten years) and be not expected to go anywhere.
Let’s say you are a hiring manager and you have the following two choices:
(A) independent, agressive and creative employee who may argue with you, leave if you piss them off and generally do only a mixture of what you want them to do and what they feel like doing
(B) Someone who will simply do what they are told and never, ever argue or leave
Many hiring managers select for B in my experience. These are weak managers but they are very common.
This may predispose the characteristics of Asian workers imported into the valley to be the non entrepreneurial ones.
To be an executive you have to take risks, you have to take stands, you have to be agressive. A visa worker cannot do these things out of fear.