Minority Participation of the Senior Management of Private U.S. Hospitals

Abstract

This article examines minority participation in hospital senior management and how participation varies across areas in response to demographic and other market influences. We use data from Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, United States from 2008 to 2014 reported by private hospitals in the United States, grouped into 381 metropolitan areas. Analysis shows minority participation is sensitive to some local market factors including total population, share of minorities in the population, relative number of minorities with bachelor’s degrees in the population, and the concentration of local hospital markets. But, unlike markets for other hospital jobs (professionals, middle managers, and other jobs), changes in these factors create only small changes in minority participation for senior managers. Our results demonstrate that minority participation in senior management is not going to improve very much from future increases in minority populations and from educational parity. Public policies and deliberate organizational strategies will be required to make substantial improvements in diversity of senior management.