Goldman Sachs, whose chairman and CEO is an old, white man, is taking a stance against old, white men.
The investment bank announced this week that it will not invest in any company that hasn’t proven its wokeness by including at least one “diverse” character in its board. For the purposes of this exercise in virtue signaling, “diverse” presumably means non-white or female or both.
“Starting on July 1 in the U.S. and Europe, we’re not going to take a company public unless there’s at least one diverse board candidate, with a focus on women,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said. “And we’re going to move towards 2021 requesting two.”
Two whole women! How forward-thinking of them.
Racial and gender diversity can add much-needed intellectual diversity to the workplace. However, a real commitment to diversity requires recognition of that as the true end of seeking gender and racial diversity. On the other hand, you can set up quotas in order to virtue signal without doing any thinking, then just sit back and wait for the applause, as Goldman Sachs appears to have done.
We get it. After the WeWork debacle, Goldman Sachs needs some good PR. “But whatever the motivation,” writes one Bloomberg columnist, “pushing for greater diversity ups the collective pressure on other financiers to use their power for good.”
Of course, the idea of diversity on corporate boards is good. And according to Forbes, it’s also good business. “Companies with one diverse board member saw a 44% jump in their average share price within a year of going public, while those with no diverse board members saw only a 13% increase in share price.”
But a quota cheapens the idea of diversity in the workplace by making it about hitting a minimally acceptable standard. Thanks but no thanks for the publicity stunt, Goldman Sachs.
