Enough is enough: Identifying and overcoming acts of anti-Black performative allyship in the peer-review process

Abstract

The purpose of our article is to provide insights as to how anti-Black performative allyship in the peer-review process obstructs the advancement of Black scholarship in management and organization studies (MOS). To accomplish this, we rely on critical race theory (CRT) to (1) contextualize and conceptualize anti-Black performative allyship within the peer-review process and explain its harmful effects; (2) identify three specific acts of anti-Black performative allyship within the peer-review process; (3) use narrative accounts to demonstrate our experiences with these acts of anti-Black performative allyship within the peer-review process; and (4) discuss corrective steps toward the realization of genuine allyship by MOS to advance Black scholarship. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Introduction

Over the past 50 years, a growing number of management and organization studies (MOS) scholars have called out problematic hegemonic actors and scholarly journal gatekeepers (e.g. MOS journal editors and reviewers) for devaluing Black scholarship (Cox and Nkomo, 1990; King et al., 2023a; Murphy, 1973; Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023). Black scholarship refers to the “epistemic practices grounded in the social realities and locations of both individuals and communities of African descent (i.e. Black people)” (Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023: 4). Black scholarship is particularly important because it centers Black people’s experiences and focuses on the role of socio-cultural and historical factors in different parts of the world in which Black people live and work. In other words, Black scholarship captures the lived experiences of Black people across the globe in places such as the United States of America (Leigh and Melwani, 2019; Rice et al., 2023a, 2024), Brazil (Santos et al., 2020), China (Sautman, 1994), United Kingdom (Mullen, 2012), Israel (Abusneineh, 2021), Australia (Majavu, 2020), South Africa (Madlingozi, 2017), Canada (Jean-Pierre and James, 2020), France (Keaton, 2010), and beyond. Given that Black people live and work across many countries, Black scholarship is global in nature.

Black scholarship is frequently marginalized and often excluded within MOS due to anti-Blackness. Anti-Blackness refers to a web of attitudes, practices, and behaviors that work to oppress Black communities and foster an antagonist relationship between Blackness and humanity/dignity (Dumas and Ross, 2016). Notably, this anti-Blackness in MOS is an epistemic injustice. An epistemic injustice refers to a wrong or transgression done to someone specifically in their capacity as a researcher (Fricker, 2010) and there are two distinct forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice (Fricker, 2007, 2010, 2017). According to Fricker (2007), testimonial injustice occurs when a knower or researcher suffers a credibility deficit (i.e. they are ignored, dismissed, undermined, and/or marginalized) based on one or more of their identities (e.g. a researcher of Black scholarship is undermined during the peer-review process). Fricker (2007) also notes that “the cause of testimonial injustice is a prejudice through which the speaker is misjudged and perceived as epistemically lesser (a direct discrimination)” (p. 53). In other words, a testimonial injustice occurs when a researcher’s credibility (i.e. their testimony) is questioned because of an identity prejudice. A salient example of testimonial injustice is when some police officers do not believe what Black people tell them, simply because they are Black. As our article proceeds, we describe various examples of testimonial injustices, such as when MOS journal editors and reviewers constantly imply untrustworthiness and raise credibility concerns regarding Black samples that are not raised regarding non-Black samples (e.g. majority white samples).

Distinctly, a hermeneutical injustice occurs when evaluators do not have the interpretive tools to bestow credibility upon someone with knowledge (Fricker, 2010). This form of injustice occurs when we collectively do not have an understanding, or a schema, for a researcher’s ideas. This gap in understanding disproportionately affects the most socially marginalized, those whose experiences are most poorly understood. Hermeneutical injustice is more closely linked to structural bias, as it is an injustice based on marginalized groups’ unequal participation in both the creation of social practices and an understanding of reality itself. A salient example of this is how American society has a collective hermeneutical resource based on a history of white supremacy (Anderson, 2017; Liu, 2017, 2022a, 2022b). Our understanding of knowledge and information, our epistemology, is steeped in a construction of whiteness that also contributes to the pervasiveness of anti-Blackness across society, including within the MOS peer-review process. The peer-review process refers to a knowledge production process in which researchers submit manuscripts to scholarly journals and journal editors and reviewers evaluate the quality of a manuscript and their suitability for publication in scholarly journals (Faggion, 2016).

Indeed, the epistemic injustice of anti-Blackness in MOS is well documented. For example, Murphy (1973) was among the first scholars to directly point to the lack of research on Black employees in MOS. Approximately two decades later, Nkomo (1992) and several other MOS scholars (Bell, 1992; Bell and Nkomo, 1999; Cox, 1990; Cox and Nkomo, 1990; Nkomo and Cox, 1990) raised this particular concern again. Nonetheless, this expressed concern about the lack of MOS studies that centered Black employees was largely ignored. To this end, some MOS scholars have noted that research consistently shows that Black employees do not matter (Opie and Roberts, 2017) and “scholarship that directly addresses nuanced Black employee experiences remains stagnant, if not waning” (King et al., 2023a: 151). Even so, at the height of America’s racial reckoning in 2020, this lack of attention to Black scholarship within MOS was amplified. This is because “the spring of 2020 was marked by several high-profile cases of excessive force by law enforcement that resulted in the deaths of Black people, and in the aftermath, significant societal attention has focused on the experiences of Black people in American society and its organizations” (Miller et al., 2021: 352). Consequently, there is a renewed interest in pushing dominant MOS actors and journal gatekeepers to view Black scholarship as a legitimate standalone body of knowledge (King et al., 2023a; Mir and Zanoni, 2021; Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023). This is a push to reduce the epistemic injustice brought on by the whiteness of MOS.

Although Black scholarship is a legitimate and global research domain, many powerful MOS actors and academic journal gatekeepers still devalue and marginalize Black scholarship as they reinforce oppressive systems in their respective contexts. In MOS, that context is the hegemony of white supremacy (Banerjee, 2022; Liu et al., 2017, 2022a, 2022b; Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023), as it centers on majority or dominant voices, which reinforces whiteness as the prevailing perspective and norm (Liu et al., 2017, 2022a, 2022b; Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2022, 2023). It is important to note that we use the term white supremacy not to refer to violent white power hate groups, but to refer to “structures that privilege white communities and institutionalize systemic racism against racial minorities not just through the more obvious mechanisms of political disenfranchisement, economic subjugation, police brutality, and ghettoization, but also through everyday practices and ‘business-as-usual’ . . . ” (McCluney et al., 2020: 249).

Undoubtedly, the impact of white supremacy is pervasive and manifests in multiple ways in MOS (Liu, 2017, 2022a, 2022b). For example, Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury (2022) discussed the concept of “dual structural advantages as denoting that, first, when hegemonic actors. . .epistemically exclude the ‘Other’ . . . from knowledge production, they safeguard a white supremacist academic system and thus protect racist interests” (p. 169). Extant MOS literature relies primarily on assumptions and data based on middle-class, Western, white, white-collar workers and college students (Hall et al., 2017; Norenzayan and Heine, 2005). This produces “an epistemic blindness in most management theories because histories of race, racism and colonialism are excluded or glossed over” (Banerjee, 2022: 1074). The dominant or white perspective is often considered the norm (Liu, 2017, 2022a), while the knowledge production of Black scholarship and the decision to center Black employees’ workplace experiences are devalued. Research has found that “scholars, publishers, and other experts represent specific interests and credentialing processes, and their knowledge claims must satisfy the epistemological and political criteria of the contexts in which they reside” (Collins, 1989: 752). However, the historic and continual invisibility of Black scholarship as a standalone body of research within MOS primarily speaks to the systemic erasure and silencing of Black experiences and voices within the peer-review process.

The silencing of Black experiences and anti-Black bias within the peer-review process has been discussed by various scholars. For example, Cox (1990) highlighted how researchers were discouraged from focusing on race and encountered multiple methodological obstacles that undermine Black employees from being studied. One of the obstacles identified was the impact of the researcher’s race on the peer-review process. Nkomo (1992) discussed how race was studied from a European-centric perspective, which resulted in intellectual errors and faulty generalizations in the knowledge production process. Avery et al. (2022) highlighted the salience and pervasiveness of anti-Black bias in the peer-review process. Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury (2023) articulated how a historically racist knowledge production system marginalizes Black scholarship. They also defined “epistemic struggle as striving to produce and disseminate knowledge in the face of difficulties and resistance generated by structural and agential powers” (pg. 3). We seek to extend this literature by identifying acts of anti-Black performative allyship in the peer-review process and how to overcome the barriers that prevent Black scholarship from developing. Performative allyship, as a pervasive form of epistemic injustice, is defined as a convenient, effortless action that simultaneously props up existing power structures while accruing personal (e.g. reputational, legitimacy) benefits to those performing the action (Kutlaca and Radke, 2023).

That being said, we also acknowledge the commendable effort being made to counteract the invisibility of Black scholarship. In this particular countereffort, scholars have focused on critical lines of inquiry such as epistemic survival (Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023), intellectual activism (Collins, 2013; Contu, 2018, 2020), decolonizing management theory and practices (Banerjee, 2022; Liu, 2017), and the problematic denial of slavery and anti-Black racism in MOS (Cooke, 2003; Opie and Roberts, 2017). To this end, our goal is to build on the aforementioned body of work by highlighting the negative impact of performative allyship on Black scholarship in the peer review process.

In this article, we explain how epistemic injustice in the form of anti-Black performative allyship occurs in the peer-review process. We proceed as follows: First, we demonstrate the value of critical race theory (CRT) as we rely on its propositions to contextualize and conceptualize anti-Black performative allyship in the peer-review process and explain its harmful effects. Second, we identify three specific acts of anti-Black performative allyship within the peer-review process that obstruct the development of Black scholarship. Third, we use narrative accounts to demonstrate our experiences with these acts of anti-Black performative allyship within the peer-review process. Fourth, we propose corrective first steps that can be implemented within MOS to advance Black scholarship.

The obstruction of Black scholarship: A critical race perspective

In their article centered on advancing Black scholarship, Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury (2023) raised an important question: “Why does MOS endorse discourses of equality, diversity and inclusion on the one hand yet ignore the epistemic injustice suffered by Black scholars on the other?” (p. 3). This is an important question and one that is our central concern as we consider the production and devaluation of Black scholarship. To answer this question, we rely on CRT as a theoretical framework to discuss the continual silencing and devaluation of Black scholarship within the peer-review process. CRT is derived from critical legal studies and is a framework that views laws as political and strategic in maintaining power. As such, it pushed legal scholars and law professors to teach law in fundamentally new ways by challenging the existing notions of just and objective knowledge production within legal studies. CRT stems from the foundational work of Bell (1976a, 1976b, 1978, 1980) and later emerged as a theoretical framework grounded in the research by Crenshaw et al. (1995). CRT is an important framework needed to analyze the relationship between power, race, and racism in American structures and institutions, the erasure of marginalized people’s experiences, and the perpetuation of racial inequality, particularly in the United States (Crenshaw et al., 1995). Specifically, we draw on four primary propositions of CRT: (1) racism as ubiquitous and enduring in society; (2) white supremacy as the engine of racism; (3) the role of interest convergence in perpetuating racism; and (4) the importance of centering the voices of marginalized populations to uncover and overcome racism.

First and foremost, CRT posits racism as structurally embedded (Opoku-Dakwa and Rice, 2024). As such, racism is conceived of as the “means by which society allocates privilege and status” (Delgado and Stefancic, 2017: 21). Accordingly, CRT argues that structural racism is deeply entrenched within all forms of American social, structural, and institutional practices and policies that privilege whiteness (Bonilla-Silva, 1997; Feagin, 2013). Because CRT argues that race is pervasive and central to our everyday lives, then we should “recognize it as a fact of organizational life that has meaningful implications for a significant and valuable population of people” (King et al., 2023a: 149).

Next, CRT allows us to understand that racism is a salient consequence of whiteness, as the dominant category of power that has emerged from a history of global colonial domination (see Fields, 2001; López, 2012). Consequently, as a product of our colonial history, whiteness is socially constructed by dominant actors as the default norm, while deviations from whiteness are constructed as subordinate. This idea of whiteness relies on differential racialization. This means that whiteness is neither demarcated solely by skin color nor by national origin (Ozawa, 1922). Instead, it is identified by the changing interests of power and capital (Deslippe, 1923). Plainly stated, we consider whiteness as “the unmarked category against which difference is constructed (Lipsitz, 1995: 369),” and importantly, this category of power “never has to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations” (Lipsitz, 1995: 369). In this context, CRT makes clear that the experiences of people of the global racial and ethnic majority are shaped by the omnipresence of whiteness and its perpetuation via systems of white supremacy, the economic and political structures that drive and maintain racial inequality in all facets of life, including the production of knowledge (Joseph et al., 2021; Miller, 2006; Roberts et al., 2020).

Another tenet of CRT we rely on is the idea of interest convergence (Bell, 1980; Opoku-Dakwa and Rice, 2024). This idea is that racism amends itself to serve powerful interests, in this case, whiteness. Bell (1980) notes that “the interest of blacks in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of whites. . .racial remedies, if granted, will secure, advance, or at least not harm societal interests deemed important by middle- and upper-class whites” (p. 523). Bell (1980) further argues that integration and Civil Rights legislation more broadly, as well as even the emancipation proclamation, were all less about the dissipation of racism and more about the interest convergence of liberal whites and Black activists. This point is important in problematizing what Beeman (2022) describes as liberal white supremacy, which is a set of practices and beliefs progressive white people engage in to assert their moral superiority over other people (both white people and people of color) they see as less sophisticated in their understanding of racism and injustice. Accordingly, these practices and beliefs help white people maintain control of the discourse on racial justice and retain their dominant positions, yet ultimately continue to reproduce the same inequities.

Finally, CRT prioritizes and centers discourse (often via storytelling) on the lived experiences and narratives of racially subordinated groups, whose stories are typically silenced and/or erased by white supremacy (Delgado and Stefancic, 2017). CRT calls such stories counter-narratives and counter-framing to the dominant narratives of white supremacy that we have described so far (Feagin, 2013). We introduce counter-narratives to provide accounts that highlight the epistemic injustice of anti-Blackness in the peer-review process. In the context of the MOS peer-review process, Black scholarship is continuously devalued and silenced by gatekeepers that maintain the prevailing power structures in knowledge production and dissemination (Joseph et al., 2021; Miller, 2006; Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023; Roberts et al., 2020). Therefore, research that centers the experiences of racially subordinated groups is called into question with validity and generalizability narratives that strip the importance of objectivity and legitimacy within the peer-review process (Joseph et al., 2021).

In the sections to come, we show that when considering the peer-review process, these tenets of CRT culminate in our understanding that it is a process situated in white supremacy, and therefore a process in which racism is ubiquitous and enduring. To the extent that the process signals it is overcoming its inherent anti-Blackness, and these signals are common, we are likely to uncover the role of interest convergence in this perceived triumph over racism. As we explain further in this article, because we know that anti-Blackness is so deeply entrenched in the peer-review process, these signals are generally performative. Next, we use CRT to contextualize and conceptualize the MOS peer-review process as performative allyship and detail the intricacies and its role in derailing Black scholarship in the peer-review process.

Contextualizing performative allyship in the peer-review process and its harmful effects

We echo the calls to challenge MOS scholarship made by leading scholars to disrupt the invisibility of Black people in MOS (Cox and Nkomo, 1990; Nkomo, 1992, 2021) and the confinement of race to niche areas of research, rather than acknowledging its centrality and importance within the field (Nkomo, 1992, 2021). Although there have been calls to address systemic inequities in MOS in the 1970s (Murphy, 1973), 1990s (Nkomo, 1992), and 2020s (King et al., 2023a; Nkomo, 2021), we continue to see the persistence of maintaining the status quo employed by performative allyship. Nkomo’s (1992) foundational article still rings true today, “all have a vested interest in continuing the procession and not calling attention to the omissions” (p. 488).

We argue that our current MOS peer-review process views Black scholarship as a deviation from and inferior to mainstream research. Additionally, MOS scholars generally advance Black scholarship per the principle of interest convergence and in alignment with white supremacy, in ways that maintain or even perpetuate prevailing racial knowledge structures (Bell, 1980). Thus, when MOS endorses a discourse of diversity, equity, and inclusion on one hand, yet ignores the epistemic injustices suffered by Black scholarship (Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023), MOS is engaging in performative allyship. The use of the term performative allyship has become increasingly common as a way to describe someone who appears to be performing the role of an ally, without actually engaging in the necessary, and often difficult, work to be an ally. In other words, performative allyship is “where well-meaning people show interest in becoming an ally to those with less power and/or privilege but do not engage in the ongoing emotional labor, self-reflection, continuous education, courage, commitment, and exchange of power inherent in true allyship” (Erskine and Bilimoria, 2019: 329). Erskine and Bilimoria (2019) also noted that “performative allies are driven by the need for validation and may intellectually understand the issues at hand, yet not sacrifice their personal or professional capital to challenge or transform systems that they benefit from, even unwittingly” (p. 329). Echoing this sentiment, Kalina (2020) described a performative ally as “someone from a nonmarginalized group professing support and solidarity with a marginalized group, but in a way that is not helpful. . .it excuses people from making deeper personal sacrifices” (p. 478–479).

Regarding performative allyship, it is important to acknowledge that Spanierman and Smith (2017) point to the potential drawbacks of white allyship, including white savior attitudes and paternalistic behavior toward non-white communities, surface-level engagement that does not translate into structural change; assumption that oppression can be equated amongst varying groups leading to false empathy, and the overemphasis of white racial identity that may compromise their impact as allies. The subterfuge that takes place as white allies work to engage in superficial activist behavior, whether intended or not, works to derail important transformative change that can only occur through intense structural shifts in institutions and systems of privilege and power. The events of 2020 led to discourses of performative allyship through intentional acts of white allies across social media, in the streets, and organizations.

Mohammed et al. (2021) also note that the concept of performative allyship “is increasingly used in public discourse to problematize the performative element of corporations, social media ‘influencers,’ and celebrities in supporting social causes such as anti-Black police violence” (p. 2). Levine-Rasky and Ghaffar-Siddiqui (2020) also address performative allyship in the context of the social movement spurred on by the killing of George Floyd, noting that most activist behaviors happen online. They argue that most “observers regard actions concentrated online as having little impact. . .whether described as performative allyship, optical allyship, or clicktivism, they function to appease white individuals’ conscience” (Levine-Rasky and Ghaffar-Siddiqui, 2020: 80). CRT makes clear that performative allyship has proliferated as a result of interest convergence between gatekeepers of white supremacy and broader societal structures (e.g. academia) who do not see themselves as engaging in problematic behaviors. This convergence primarily occurs because performative allyship allows whiteness to retain its power and control.

The engagement of performative allyship by MOS is not without significant consequences. As summarized by Wellman (2022), “performative allyship is harmful toward the cause” (p. 2). This is also the case for MOS engagement of performative allyship. As an epistemic injustice, performative allyship restricts Black scholarship’s scientific freedom. Scientific freedom refers to freedom from an external force, which is required to ensure that scientists and researchers have independence of thought (Tsui and McKiernan, 2022). As noted by Einstein, “the development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit requires a freedom that consists in the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudice” (Isaacson, 2008: 550). More relevant to Black scholarship, scholars have argued that there is a lack of epistemic justice (Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023) and openness (Banerjee, 2022) in the MOS peer-review process. This particular lack of epistemic justice and openness restricts the scientific freedom extended to Black scholarship researchers. Therefore, researchers in Black scholarship do not generally enjoy the same respect, privileges, and independence of thought extended to other MOS areas.

Specifically, these restrictions evoke Nkomo’s (2021) incisive articulation of how the importance of race has been silenced in our field, prompting her to address “the discipline to challenge the ongoing exclusion of race and the potential erasure of Black voices in MOS” (p. 213). Nkomo (2021) recognized this as “not a mere rejection, but an epistemic violence – silencing race and the Black voices who sought to bring it into the academy” (p. 213).

The restriction of scientific freedom toward Black scholarship researchers is unsurprising. Although numerous studies have focused on diversity, inclusion, and discrimination, studies that specifically center Black employees remain rare (King et al., 2023a; Mir and Zanoni, 2021). The rarity of centering Black employees is tied to hegemonic actors and journal gatekeepers restricting Black scholarship’s scientific freedom. This ultimately obstructs the development of Black scholarship.

The aforementioned contextualization and conceptualization of performative allyship creates a context that enables performative allyship to manifest in a variety of ways within MOS. However, considering the importance placed on the publication and peer-review process, we focus our attention on three salient ways that MOS engages in performative allyship: (1) explicit emphasis on and welcome of Black scholarship in special issues, effectively confining Black scholarship to special issues primarily and marginalizing its impact/importance/reach; (2) identification and celebration of Black scholarship primarily as racial differences research (i.e. using Black people as a control or social comparison group), effectively typecasting Black scholarship simply as the study of a moderating variable to amplify whiteness; and (3) public proclamations of allyship while allowing anti-Black racial bias to persist in the peer-review process (i.e. choosing conflict avoidance over genuine allyship). Although other acts of anti-Black performative allyship exist (e.g. subsuming Black scholarship under broader categories like diversity and multiculturalism), we explain these three acts of anti-Black performative allyship in the following section due to their pervasiveness and our ability to illustrate them through personal narrative accounts.

Identifying acts of anti-Black performative allyship in the peer-review process

As noted by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1913, p. 10), “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” Accordingly, we draw on our short narrative accounts to elucidate the three acts of anti-Black performative allyship in the peer-review process. A central tenet of CRT, as we explained above, is the explanatory power of storytelling by the marginalized and oppressed (Delgado and Stefancic, 2017). To understand how various forms of anti-Black racism impact Black people, it is important to start by centering Black people as focal storytellers who routinely navigate systems that are largely inconsiderate of their challenges and contributions (King et al., 2023a). In solidarity with Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury (2023), the authors as Black scholars, acknowledge and provide their lived experiences with “racism, epistemic injustice and exclusion of our communities from MOS” (p. 3).

Predominantly publishing Black scholarship in special issues

MOS engages in anti-Black performative allyship when Black scholarship is predominantly published via special issues, editorials, and commentaries while being unlikely to appear in regular issues in leading MOS journals (Roberts et al., 2020). Although Black scholarship can be traced back to the 1960s (e.g. Bloom, 1969), it is not regularly published in leading MOS journals. This has been a common critique dating back to the 1970s. For example, after reviewing the field of organizational behavior, Murphy (1973) concluded that race is neglected and there was a paucity of research derived from Black samples. Cox and Nkomo (1990) conducted a quantitative review to provide a status update regarding the study of race and concluded that Murphy’s (1973) argument was still accurate. We also note that the work of Cox and Nkomo (1990) was published in a special issue, not a regular issue. King et al. (2023a) evaluated the state of Black scholarship and described it as stagnant and waning. Echoing this sentiment, Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury (2023) noted that there are “very few cases where Black scholarship gains exposure through leading MOS journal outlets” (p. 10).

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with advancing Black scholarship via special issues. Any MOS topic area can be advanced via special issues. Certainly, Black scholarship has been advanced in recent special issues of the Journal of Applied Psychology (e.g. King et al., 2023b; Prengler et al., 2023), Journal of Business Ethics (Derry et al., 2024), Journal of Business and Psychology (e.g. King et al., 2023a; Williams et al., 2023), and International Journal of Human Resource Management (e.g. Rice et al., 2023a). However, when Black scholarship is primarily published in special issues as opposed to regular issues, it reinforces the hegemonic belief that categorizes Black scholarship as narrowly focused “minority” research (Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023) and unfit for regular publication in leading journals (Cox, 1990; Diaz and Bergman, 2013; Roberts et al., 2020). If other mainstream topics are commonly published in leading MOS regular issues, as well as in special issues, then this should also be the case for Black scholarship. Subsequently, when MOS relegates most of the Black scholarship to special issues and infrequently publishes Black scholarship in regular issues, this is performative allyship. This is analogous to an organization establishing a Black affinity group to whom it gives resources during Black History Month and Juneteenth, but then withholds resources and/or largely ignores this Black affinity group outside of Black History Month and Juneteenth.

We return to CRT’s interest convergence proposition. Predominantly relegating Black scholarship to special issues requires no significant action or change in power structures. Special issues are a departure from the regular issue peer-review process. This departure means that there is no risk to the regular journal or its gatekeepers since special issues can be understood as niche attempts to build knowledge outside of a journal’s main reputation. Special issues are also generally guided by “temporary guest” editors who are responsible for finding appropriate reviewers as well. Consequently, this does not require any transformative or permanent change to the system and there is no risk for MOS journals, a defining feature of performative allyship. Nkomo (2021) highlights that “some journals have recently published special issues in response to calls to end systemic racism,” (p. 215), but forewarns against these being “superficial gestures,” rather than “genuine realization that race matters in organizations” (p. 215). Superficial gestures are also clear indicators of performative allyship.

Here we highlight two of the authors’ own experiences. First, we discuss one author’s experiences upon transitioning into the field of management. Ironically this author, having come from a different discipline and joining the management discipline, was encouraged by senior MOS scholars to submit their research for publication in special issues. This advice was seen as a way of supporting their research in management given the focus on Black women’s experiences in white institutional spaces. The idea was that special issues would be more likely to publish research centering on Black scholarship at a time when racial tensions were intensified, and journals were clamoring to highlight the experiences of Black people. Unfortunately, performative allyship capitalizes on the ancillary nature of action versus an embedded practice that creates systemic change. In the case of a special issue, its function should be to highlight the critical discourses already in core debates amplified in regular journal issues. There is a devaluation of Black scholarship when it is predominantly relegated to special issues. This is because it becomes additive versus intrinsic to the knowledge production process, which inherently protects the reproduction and maintenance of whiteness (Joseph et al., 2021; Miller, 2006; Roberts et al., 2020). Upon further reflection, all the authors have shared their personal experiences with being encouraged to publish in special issues, adding weight that this practice may be widely accepted within MOS.

Second, we discuss one author’s experiences in publishing Black scholarship. This author sought to investigate and demonstrate the problematic interactions between Trump-supporters (supporters of former US President Donald J. Trump) and Black employees in the workplace. This particular project was motivated by an increasing number of reports that Trump-supporters were verbally and physically attacking Black people (e.g. Derysh, 2020; Moyer and Starrs, 2016). Beyond the reporting of these incidents in the news, empirical evidence also demonstrated that Trump-supporters tend to have anti-Black prejudices (Hopkins, 2021; Isom et al., 2022). Research has demonstrated that prejudice is also a reliable predictor of expressed hostility (Duckitt, 2003) and aggressiveness (Genthner and Taylor, 1973). Therefore, one of the authors of this paper and his authorship team leveraged these insights to argue and demonstrate that supervisors perceived as Trump-supporting are more likely to display abusive supervision toward Black employees compared to supervisors perceived as Trump-opposing. This particular mixed-methods project was either desk-rejected or rejected after being sent out for review at leading MOS journals, before being published in a special issue.

Here, one MOS journal editor’s desk rejected the paper.

MOS journal editor (desk reject decision): We are sorry to inform you that we will not be sending this manuscript out for review. Because of the high number of submissions, we receive, we have to be rigorous in determining which manuscripts to send out for review. We consider three main criteria when evaluating manuscripts. These are the extent to which the manuscript: (1) satisfies our publication guidelines, (2) fits within our domain of research, and (3) has a reasonable possibility of being evaluated favorably by our editorial and review team.

Here, another MOS journal editor rejected the paper after an initial round of reviews, stating that the reviewers thought that the paper was interesting and addressed important issues, but there was a lack of clarity around the research question and its contributions.

MOS journal editor (rejected after initial assessment by review team): The review team was unanimous that the paper was interesting and that it was addressing important issues that need more attention and research in the management literature. The review team also found the paper well written and easy to read. At the same time, issues regarding to the clarity of the specific research question addressed in the paper and consequent lack of understanding of theoretical contributions were identified.

Although the author and his authorship team thought the research question (i.e. what is the impact of supervisors with anti-Black sentiments on Black employees), rationale (i.e. Trump-supporters verbally and physically attacking Black employees), and contributions (i.e. advancing Black scholarship) were clear, the authors were not given an opportunity to address any of the concerns. Given the lack of any mention of a fatal flaw, this decision seemed odd. Nonetheless, the rejection of this research at leading MOS journals reaffirmed the advice given to the author at the multiple PhD Project Management Faculty of Color Association/Management Doctoral Student Association conferences. That advice is that leading MOS journals do not regularly publish research based exclusively on Black employees, affirming the desk rejection rationale (i.e. not having a reasonable possibility of being evaluated favorably by the editorial and review team). Consequently, it came as no surprise that these premier MOS journal targets had not regularly published any empirical studies that centered Black employees in at least 10 years prior to this submission. Once it became apparent that a regular issue publication was unlikely, the author submitted the article to a special issue. This decision resulted in a “revise and resubmit,” which eventually became a publication (i.e. Rice et al., 2023a).

MOS journal editor (revise and resubmit after initial assessment by the review team): While we cannot accept your work in its current form, we are excited to offer you the opportunity to revise your work for resubmission. I should note that is no guarantee that a revision will result in a successful outcome. Having said that, we all see a great deal of potential value in your work, and both reviewers make multiple positive comments about aspects of your paper, which I share. For example, one strength is your focus on Black employees in your theorizing and sampling.

Primarily typecasting Black scholarship to the study of racial differences

MOS also engages in anti-Black performative allyship when it typecasts and primarily confines Black scholarship to the study of racial differences. Racial differences research focuses on treating race as a moderating variable to generally compare differences between Black employees and white/non-Black employees (Hernandez et al., 2019; McKay et al., 2007; Reynolds et al., 2021; Simons et al., 2007). Although racial differences research is an important aspect of Black scholarship, it should not be the sole or dominant aspect of Black scholarship. Typecasting and confining Black scholarship primarily to the study of racial differences research is similar to MOS confining the entirety of women’s studies to the literature on gender differences or LGBTQIA+ scholarship to the literature on sexual orientation differences. To this end, MOS has tokenized racial differences research and has historically used racial differences research as a way to suggest that the journal supports Black scholarship. (i.e. we have published racial differences research, so we support Black scholarship). For example, there are multiple meta-analyses that focus on the topic of racial differences in MOS (e.g. Foldes et al., 2008; Kraiger and Ford, 1985; McCord et al., 2018) as race is commonly treated as a moderating variable. Conversely, we are unable to find a meta-analysis that centers Black employees’ workplace experiences. In this regard, it seems as if publishing racial differences research serves as “a box to check” for multiple leading MOS journals. Such actions signal legitimacy, a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, that still maintains existing commitments to scholarship centered on whiteness. No transformative change is needed to make such commitments. Since MOS has a long history of treating race as a moderating variable, this represents an act of performative allyship.

Here we highlight our experiences of receiving a very predictable comment from MOS journal editors and reviewers, namely insisting on comparing Black employees with white employees, while also minimizing the influence of Black culture on management concepts. Black culture refers to the way of life of those who are of African descent, and their retention and creation of continental ancestry (Carter, 2003; Idang, 2018). Black culture can also be understood as Black individual and collective construction of meaning and struggles of resistance, grounded in the Black experience (Shorbagy, 2023). The examples below are taken from two separate Black scholarship research projects. We emphasize the predictable nature of the comments because it became an inside joke about how many reviewers would ask us to collect a sample of white employees for comparison purposes.

MOS journal reviewer: Ethical leadership is not a construct that has specific meaning or relevance to race. . .Compare black and white participants.

MOS journal reviewer: Although a focus on Black professionals is appreciated, given the generic nature of your model I do think that a comparison group of White professionals is warranted.

The first project integrated the work of Fluker (1998), which discusses ethical leadership from a Black cultural context (Burrow, 2018; King and Fluker, 2005). The second project integrated the work of Parker and Towler (2019), which discusses authoritarianism as a source of racial oppression for Black people. Nonetheless, reviewers ignorantly dismissed the elements of Black culture. The clear dismissal of the aspects of Black culture felt as if it was carried out in an effort to typecast our Black scholarship into racial differences research. Across both studies, six reviewers (an associate editor and two reviewers for each manuscript) failed to even acknowledge the Black cultural arguments embedded within our theoretical arguments in their comments. There were no comments that explained why the Black cultural arguments were accurate or inaccurate. Therefore, it felt as if the reviewers wanted to ghostwrite our projects and turn our projects into studies they would like to see published (i.e. racial differences studies).

The question that MOS has to ask and address is: Beyond racial differences research, what other forms of Black scholarship are commonly published? The answer is very little (Cox, 1990; Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023). This is evidenced by the recent multiple “calls to action” to center Black employees in MOS research (e.g. King et al., 2023a; Mir and Zanoni, 2021). Unfortunately, given MOS’s tokenization of racial differences research, MOS has created an epistemology in which Black employees are generally of interest in the context of social comparisons with white employees or other non-Black employees. This suggests that Black people’s sole experiences are devalued and must be validated through the comparative experiences of the dominant group or other non-Black groups/voices, which obstructs Black scholarship from advancing (Clemons, 2019; Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023). In MOS, white employees and their experiences are the default or norm, which highlights how whiteness is perpetuated and reinforced within MOS. Note the reinforcement and centrality of whiteness in the above example since the reviewers specify that the sample should be compared specifically with a white sample, not a more “diverse” sample. Thus, as long as MOS primarily confines and tokenizes Black scholarship to the study of racial differences, MOS is engaging in anti-Black performative allyship.

Publicly soliciting Black scholarship while not addressing anti-Black bias in the peer- review process

Indeed, multiple MOS researchers have explained that the production of knowledge in MOS is grounded in white supremacy (e.g. Banerjee, 2022; Cox, 1990; Liu, 2017, 2022a, 2022b; Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023; Nkomo, 1992, 2021). As a result, scholarship from and on people of the global racial and ethnic majority is generally marginalized as peripheral to the centrality of whiteness. Of particular interest to our article, we also acknowledge that MOS scholars have discussed in detail the epistemic injustice of the anti-Black racial bias in the peer-review process (Cox, 1990; Cox and Nkomo, 1990). For example, Avery et al. (2022) noted that “a majority (or all) Black sample seems to invite questions of generalizability that a majority (or all) white sample does not seem to invite” (p. 10). Similarly, Bell et al. (2021) noted that “editorial decisions and reviewers’ assessments sometimes exhibit bias against certain diversity related scholarship, language, and methods, and this may particularly negatively affect Black scholars” (p. 47). Additionally, Collins (1989) argued that the adequacy of methods is challenged when produced by marginalized scholars, namely Black women, and noted that “new knowledge claims must be consistent with an existing body of knowledge that the group controlling the interpretive context accepts as true” (p. 743). As such, the “methods used to validate knowledge claims must also be acceptable to the group controlling the knowledge-validation process” (p. 743). Although the review process is considered to be a “blind” process (i.e. the reviewers and authors are unknown to each other), this is a common experience for Black scholarship and it is not confined to MOS as scholars across the social sciences have diagnosed this problem decades ago (e.g. Sue, 1999).

When MOS journal editors and reviewers provide statements, editorials, and workshops professing their desire to increase the amount of Black scholarship, yet take no substantive action to fundamentally disrupt the system that has historically refused the entry of Black scholarship, these actions represent the hallmark of performative allyship (Beeman, 2021; Boykin et al., 2020; Erskine and Bilimoria, 2019; Melaku and Beeman, 2020). Because performative allyship generally does not require any significant action, it may provide an opportunity for anti-Black discrimination to occur. For instance, MOS journal editors and reviewers often subject Black scholarship to numerous hurdles throughout the review process because they are more likely to question the objectivity of the authors (see Roberson et al., 2024).

While the majority of MOS scholars specialize in research on topics overwhelmingly dominated by white men and white samples (e.g. leadership, CEO and upper echelons, entrepreneurship), Black scholarship researchers are commonly perceived as self-serving (Blake-Beard et al., 2008). In effect, Black scholarship is often judged unfairly compared to mainstream MOS research. Subsequently, this failure to directly address and resolve anti-Black bias in the peer-review process subjects Black scholarship to a lose-lose situation. This situation manifests in at least two ways. The first is via a disparate and unreasonable expectation that Black scholarship models be unique and specific for Black employees (Gordon, 2010). This is a disparate and unreasonable expectation because of the inherent assumption underlying such expectations—that Black scholarship is a niche, outside of mainstream scholarship, and inferior. Black scholarship should be evaluated based on its contributions to knowledge about Black employees and communities (King et al., 2023; Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023; Rice et al., 2023a, 2024).

Our directive that MOS values Black scholarship for its contributions to knowledge about Black communities is a basic assessment. In fact, MOS has a clear precedent for valuing scholarship on historically marginalized communities, simply for its contributions to knowledge about those communities. For example, drawing from a sample of 135 refugee employees, Newman et al. (2018) examined and explained how a psychological diversity climate impacts refugee employees’ organizational commitment and turnover intentions via psychological capital. Newman et al. (2018) successfully argued that “this study makes a third contribution by providing new insight into the employment experiences of minorities who are refugees” (p. 149). Similarly, drawing from a sample of 428 transgender employees, Thoroughgood et al. (2021) examined and explained how perceptions of oppositional courage impacted transgender employees’ job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion via organization-based self-esteem. Thoroughgood et al. (2021) also successfully noted that “we add to an important body of research on the experiences of transgender employees” (p. 401). Furthermore, drawing from a sample of 212 women employees, Nie et al. (2018) examined and explained how socially responsible human resource practices impact women employees’ turnover intentions via equal career opportunity and work-life integration. In addition, MOS researchers have access to an integrative conceptual review on refugee employees (Lee et al., 2020) and a meta-analysis on workplace support for LGBTQ+ employees (Webster et al., 2018).

The aforementioned studies are insightful and have advanced MOS’s understanding of the workplace experiences of refugee, transgender, and women employees, respectively. Although the aforementioned models were not unique to the targeted group of marginalized employees, these models are vitally important to understanding the workplace experiences of refugee, transgender, and women employees. Additionally, they provide a voice to employees who are typically marginalized in the workplace. Therefore, it is clear that MOS sees value in simply centering the workplace experiences of refugee, transgender, and women employees and model uniqueness is not a requirement. While there is space for all marginalized identities to be included throughout the MOS literature, we find that research centering Black employees is not viewed in line with research that centers other marginalized employees (Roberts et al., 2020). MOS would be strengthened by a sustained focus on centering the workplace experiences of Black employees, as well as other marginalized employees, as this work collectively represents deviations from white supremacy.

To be clear, our description of the aforementioned studies should not be equated to an argument that other marginalized employees are receiving better treatment, but rather to illustrate a clear manifestation of anti-Black bias in the peer-review process. To highlight this, we now provide reviewer quotes from separate projects that were reviewed at different MOS journals to demonstrate this unreasonable expectation that Black scholarship models be unique and specific to Black employees.

MOS journal reviewer: Are your arguments and findings truly unique or specific to Black employees? In your theory you draw on a lot of research outside of the management discipline (which is a strength of your paper) in order to explain anti-Black racism and Black pain. You also integrated this work with existing management and social psychological theories to explain why ostracism when directed at Black employees is equivalent to Black pain. However, as I continued to think through your theoretical arguments I consistently found myself wondering whether the arguments that you set forth are truly specific to Black employees.

MOS journal reviewer: Although I appreciate the attempt to center Black scholarship; however, I’m not sure the current set of studies adequately reaches this goal. In the introduction and theoretical foundation, it’s not clear to me that the process identified here is a process that is particularly unique or central to Black employees. . . It seems like there would need to be something unique to Black employees to advance Black scholarship.

These particular reviewer comments restricted our ability to advance Black scholarship because they negated extant anti-Black racism and Black pain concepts as not central to Black employees, which is inconsistent with Black scholarship (Chowdhury, 2021; Rice et al., 2023a). Notably, the integration of Black cultural arguments into theoretical arguments is central to advancing Black scholarship. Certainly, King et al. (2023a) noted that “organizational scholars should invest greater attention in numerous topics concerning the varying expressions, experiences, and implications of anti-Black racism. These topics include micro-aggressions, paternalism, differential promotion rates, anti-Black sentiments endorsed by organizational leaders (e.g. via social media or alliances with white supremacists), imposter phenomenon, invalidation of Black employees’ experiences, and performative allyship, among others” (p. 149). Similarly, Chowdhury (2021) described Black pain as the psychological and physical experience of having to live as a Black person who is subject to exclusion and marginalization. Similar to other MOS research that centers the experience of marginalized employees, our respective arguments and findings should not necessarily have to be unique to Black employees but rather important on their own to understanding Black employees’ workplace experiences.

Specifically, our experiences with MOS journal editors and reviewers insisting that Black scholarship models be unique and specific to Black employees, combined with Avery et al. (2022) experiences with reviewers’ raising concerns regarding the generalizability of Black scholarship models is clear evidence of the lose-lose that Black scholarship is subjected to in the peer-review process. If Black scholarship models are unique and specific to Black employees, they are not generalizable, and Black scholarship models are penalized in the peer-review process for a lack of generalizability. However, if Black scholarship models are generalizable, they are penalized in the peer-review process for not being specific or unique to Black employees. This lose-lose situation occurs because anti-Black bias often goes unchecked in the peer-review process.

A second experience with anti-Black bias in the peer-review process is often couched within reviewer evaluations of research designs and methods. In our experience, research that reveals uncomfortable and controversial findings about Black employees’ workplace experiences tends to be rejected or discarded as too premature, with more studies needed to validate the findings. This runs counter to what we experience in our mainstream MOS research. For example, we have been very successful in testing models via pairing field and experimental studies when examining mainstream MOS topics featuring predominantly white samples (e.g. Crossley et al., 2023; Rice et al., 2020, 2021, 2023b, 2023c). Particularly, “this approach has the advantage of combining high internal validity (experiment) and high external validity (field study)” (Schuh et al., 2016: 2233). As also explained by Wang et al. (2017), “one of the benefits of utilizing different methodological approaches is that the strengths of one (e.g. the richness of the field; control in the laboratory) complement the weaknesses of the other” (p. 125). Subsequently, this approach serves as a form of constructive replication (Köhler and Cortina, 2021). However, when we use this same combination of research designs for our Black scholarship projects, it is deemed insufficient. We offer an example of comments highlighting this phenomenon below.

Here, an MOS journal associate editor commented on findings derived from an overwhelmingly white sample in a mainstream research area with the following statements:

MOS journal associate editor: I know you supported your model across two studies, so you do have strong evidence for it.

Next, a different MOS journal associate editor commented on findings derived from an all-Black sample in a Black scholarship research project as follows:

MOS journal associate editor: The research results reported are too premature for publication. More work is needed to substantiate the conclusions in your manuscript.

Certainly, an obvious question comes to mind: How can the evaluation of the findings produced via an almost identical research design and methodology result in contradictory assessments? We argue that the answer is firmly rooted in the anti-Black bias in the peer-review process (Avery et al., 2022).

We would also like to acknowledge that MOS journal editors and reviewers have commonly appreciated that we have used best practices for our experimental vignette designs (Aguinis and Bradley, 2014). For example, when manipulating abusive supervision, we used statements from Tepper’s (2000) abusive supervisor scale to describe the abusive behavior a supervisor demonstrates. In our mainstream studies, this approach has been well-received (e.g. Rice et al., 2020). In our Black scholarship studies, this approach has been viewed as problematic.

MOS journal reviewer comment: The items “other employees ignore Black employees at work” and “other employees refuse to talk to Black employees” are so strong that it is likely that any person responding to this vignette would rate the organization negatively on any survey item that followed the vignette. One suggestion here could be to actually weaken the manipulation to reflect moderate levels of ostracism (e.g., some employees occasionally ignore Black employees. . .) I recognize that this is counter to typical recommendations to strengthen experimental manipulations, but it seems prudent given the likely demand characteristics.

The comment above was made regarding a project that focused on the outcomes associated with Black employees being ostracized at work. Accordingly, we used a statement from Ferris et al. (2008) validated scale for workplace ostracism. We were stunned that a reviewer would make a comment to weaken an experimental manipulation. The irony is that even the reviewer acknowledged this runs counter to typical recommendations to strengthen manipulations. We have never been asked to weaken an experimental manipulation in our mainstream studies. Nonetheless, the message was very clear to us and we attributed it to this being a Black scholarship project. Typically, weak experimental manipulations are penalized in the peer-review process and if we weaken our experimental manipulations, that is a reason to reject our paper. However, our effective experimental manipulation was penalized in this case, resulting in a lose-lose situation.

The reviewer also raises the concern of demand characteristics, which is reasonable because demand characteristics cannot be eliminated from any experiment (Sawyer, 1975). So, this comment applies to any study that relies on experiments, not just Black scholarship experiments. However, in our mainstream research, we were able to successfully argue that “experimental results that are replicated in field studies provide strong evidence that demand characteristics aren’t the primary cause of the experimental results” (Rice et al., 2023c: 164). Field studies alleviate the concern of demand characteristics as they provide clear evidence that a finding is not confined to an experimental context. In other words, it cannot be limited to a superficial artifact tied to an experimental manipulation. Whereas MOS journal reviewers accept this rationale for our mainstream studies (e.g. Rice et al., 2023b, 2023c), this rationale is often minimized and ignored in our Black scholarship. Consequently, the message we received was although it is appropriate to use statements from validated measures to manipulate the targeted variable in our mainstream research, this approach is questionable or inappropriate for our Black scholarship research.

We highlight one last experience with such performative allyship. First, in an original article submission to a special issue, the author received a revise and resubmit from an MOS journal that very publicly espoused a commitment to Black scholarship. However, some of the comments in the requested revision led to expending considerable emotional and cognitive labor by the author and time spent mitigating racialized aggressions that the editor did not detect as problematic (e.g. Melaku, 2019, 2022). One comment suggested that the submitted research was merely a well-elaborated description of racism at work, instead of a substantive contribution to the field. The notion that the experiences of Black people are devalued in organizations and diminished (Ahmed, 2021) to accounts of racism is exemplified by this comment. Research has argued that editors and reviewers engage in subjective and subtle biases in the peer-review journal process (King et al., 2018). Black scholarship is often equated as descriptions without substantive rigorous explorations, a “trivialization of their research by fellow White colleagues” (Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023: 10). Similar to claims made by King et al. (2018) in their article discussing systematic subjectivity and the impact of subtle biases on the peer-review process, Black scholarship like diversity scholarship faces additional rigor, it is “hyperscrutinized relative to more mainstream topics” (p. 847) precisely because it is “underrepresented in the scholarly literature, particularly in the more prestigious outlets” (p. 847). Also, since the identity of the author was known by the editor, the comment regarding rigor felt particularly violent.

The example described draws attention to the performative nature of MOS journal editors and reviewers taking on this moment of awakened racial consciousness, while concomitantly engaging in “liberal white supremacist” (Beeman, 2022) practices that continue to perpetuate the devaluation of Black scholarship. This mechanism of policing Black scholarship is often unseen by white editors who perceive themselves as social justice advocates in the fight to bring attention to racism in organizational spaces. The level of invisible labor exerted by Black scholars navigating a fraught peer-review process embedded with systemic racist practices is exhausting and demoralizing (Melaku, 2019, 2022). This level of invisible labor has been shared by others as well (e.g. Roberson et al., 2024). Well-meaning white editors, whether liberal, moderate, or conservative, should work to understand and challenge their complicity in producing and perpetuating anti-Black practices in the review process, further institutionalizing racial inequality in academia (Nkomo, 2021).

Advancing Black scholarship via genuine allyship in the peer-review process

We have argued that anti-Black performative allyship restricts the development of Black scholarship. Conversely, we now explain how Black scholarship can be advanced via genuine allyship. In line with CRT, we have to recognize that “Blackness is a proxy for the lived experiences of people who, due to historical and current anti-Black racism, can be directly harmed by the (mal)practice and (mis)interpretations” (King et al., 2023a: 154). Moreover, “there is also a pertinent need to investigate barriers to organizational atonement for historical and present anti-Black racism” (King et al., 2023a: 154). Both are essential reasons why genuine allyship is needed to advance Black scholarship. Genuine allyship is about a rejection of interest convergence (Cross, 2021; Ekpe and Toutant, 2022). Unfortunately, MOS journal editors and reviewers are mainly allies when aspects of Black scholarship align with their own interests. This includes the aforementioned acts of anti-Black performative allyship, which is insufficient. Rather than perpetuating the insincere and unprincipled allyship that currently pervades MOS and broader society, King et al. (2021) argue that genuine allies must take direct action to shift and dismantle the inequitable systems that are embedded within all facets of society, particularly those that benefit them to the detriment of others. Echoing this position, Roberson et al. (2024) proposed that MOS journal editors should create systems of inclusion, transparency, and representativeness that value a range of diverse perspectives and approaches to science.

To be a genuine ally is to be a collaborator, an accomplice, and a co-conspirator, strategically working to “fight injustice and promote equity. . .through supportive personal relationships and public acts of sponsorship and advocacy” (Melaku et al., 2020: 1). Love (2019) defines a co-conspirator as an individual who exercises their privilege by working to leverage their access, resources, and power to publicly support efforts to confront anti-Blackness. Genuine allyship in the MOS peer-review process entails liberating Black scholarship from hegemonic actors in service of prevailing white power structures. It also calls to reviewers and editors to implicate themselves in the work of disrupting anti-Black bias and systemic inequities, which relegate Black scholarship to the margins of MOS research.

We believe that there are at least three actions that demonstrate genuine allyship regarding the advancement of Black scholarship: (1) valuing culturally relevant and/or particularly important research models to Black scholarship; (2) supporting innovative ways to advance Black scholarship; and (3) disrupting the white dominant gatekeeping. We argue that these three actions normalize Black scholarship within MOS, which is critical to MOS’s efforts to decolonize its knowledge creation process (Banerjee, 2022) and to deconstruct whiteness as the epicenter of scholarship (Bell, 1980; Collins, 1986; Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023).

Value research that is culturally relevant or particularly important to Black employees

One corrective step that is critical to the advancement of Black scholarship is for MOS journal editors and reviewers to value research models–both empirical and theoretical–that are culturally relevant and/or particularly important (i.e. not necessarily unique) to Black employees. This can be done by not confining Black scholarship only to special issues (Roberts et al., 2020), but systematically publishing it in regular issues which will demonstrate the value placed on research that is relevant to Black employees. This approach aligns with showing epistemic respect, which refers to focusing on the logic or originality of the research, rather than reviewers’ personal preferences and other tangential matters (Krlev and Spicer, 2023). This is a standard that should be applied to research that centers the workplace experiences of any marginalized group of employees, including Black employees. In order to work toward a systemic corrective approach, MOS journal editors should develop and publish strategic public annual reports (Roberts et al., 2020) that demonstrate the distribution of the types of research published, by whom, and the demographic composition of the review team. This way there are accountability metrics (Melaku and Winkler, 2022) in place to ensure that equitable practices are being upheld within the peer-review process.

It is clear that MOS must take steps to increase its epistemic respect for Black scholarship. When MOS journal editors and reviewers demonstrate epistemic respect to Black scholarship researchers, new insights are learned from Black scholarship. As an example, this is evident based on Leigh and Melwani’s (2019) work on mega-threats. Leigh and Melwani’s (2019) model explained the adverse impact of mega-threats on Black employees and they noted that “by focusing on the experiences of Black Americans coping with mega-threats, our theory joins a growing body of research that is centered on the experiences of Black employees” (p. 583). Leigh and Melwani (2019) also acknowledged that “while our theory is relevant for any minority employee coping with the occurrence of a relevant mega-threat, we specifically focus on highly publicized instances of violence enacted against Black Americans by law enforcement officers as the specific mega-threat” (p. 567).

Indeed, police brutality is not confined to Black people, but it disproportionately impacts Black people. Black Americans are three times more likely than white Americans to be killed by police and five times more likely to be killed unarmed (Buehler, 2017). Notably, law enforcement agencies also have historical ties to slave patrols in America. As explained by Jacobs et al. (2021), “anti-Black vestiges of slave patrols remained in police-enforced Jim Crow laws, which sought social control over Black people” (p. 42). Therefore, Leigh and Melwani’s (2019) research in particular is culturally relevant and especially important to Black people. This model was not exclusively unique or specific to Black people and race was not featured as a moderating variable. The focus was on how highly publicized acts of police brutality operate as mega-threats and adversely impact Black employees. MOS researchers have concluded that “the key to advancing Black scholarship within the field of management is investigating and explaining models or phenomena that are culturally relevant or particularly important (i.e. not necessarily unique) to Black employees (Rice et al., 2023a: 22–23).

Support innovative and non-conventional ways to advance Black scholarship

MOS journal editors and reviewers must support innovative and non-traditional ways to advance Black scholarship. In order to do so, they should encourage articles that do not solely rely on comparative analysis by supporting non-conventional approaches to advance Black scholarship. To clarify this mechanism, we leverage innovative research from the sexual harassment domain. Recently, MOS researchers have argued that insights from the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements can be integrated to advance our understanding of sexual harassment research (Chawla et al., 2021). Specifically, Chawla et al. (2021) argued that “the recent #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have illustrated the frequency with which women in particular experience sexual harassment at work” (p. 552) and subsequently proposed five recommendations to advance sexual harassment research. Similarly, MOS journal editors and reviewers should be open to researchers leveraging insights from the abolition/anti-slavery, Civil Rights, and #BlackLivesMatter movements to advance Black scholarship. If insights from social movements can move sexual harassment research from being descriptive to explanatory (Chawla et al., 2021), then insights from social movements can do the same for Black scholarship.

Another example of how non-conventional approaches can advance Black scholarship can be borrowed from the work of Pio and Syed (2018). Pio and Syed (2018) relied on a non-conventional approach of poetics to investigate how organizational practices are embedded in relational space with implications for inclusion and exclusion for Muslim employees. Subsequently, they were able to provide important theoretical implications for human relations through thoughtful reflections of Islam. Similarly, it is likely that poetics can also provide important theoretical implications for human relations through thoughtful reflections of Black culture and “working while Black” experiences.

We also acknowledge that “the management discipline offers many insights for addressing racism and other social maladies in the workplace and in society more broadly” (Krause and Miller, 2020: 1316). This is cyclical in nature because Black scholarship also offers many insights into the advancement of MOS. For example, a CRT framework embraces identity-conscious scholarship “to reveal the extent to which conventional scientific wisdom reflects and promotes interests of domination” (Salter and Adams, 2013; p. 786). MOS journal editors and reviewers must embrace the idea of theoretical frameworks outside of disciplinary norms (e.g. Black feminist transnational research), because Black scholarship draws attention to racism and asymmetrical power relations. Black scholarship also often argues MOS is theoretically rooted in colonial knowledge systems (Banerjee, 2022) and this perspective must be welcomed beyond special issues. Black scholarship must be evaluated fairly and consistently. We remind MOS journal editors and reviewers of Lepak’s (2009) guidance on good reviewing: “Think about that for a second. We ask for novelty and creativity from authors but then ask them to constrain that energy and package it in a way we would have written it. Is this fair? Good reviewing, rather than taking over the manuscript, provides authors with a relatively long leash to publish their contribution. This doesn’t mean you should not offer guidance, nor does it mean that you cannot push authors to consider alternative directions or to clarify their arguments. But it does mean that reviewers have to be open to the possibility that an author might go a different direction than suggested or might even disagree with a recommendation” (p. 378).

Disrupt the overwhelming whiteness of MOS gatekeepers

The business academy, which is the primary source of MOS journal editors and reviewers, is overwhelmingly white. In AACSB accredited business schools, only a paltry 4% of full-time faculty are Black, while almost 75% are white (Minefee et al., 2018). Given that MOS journal editors and reviewers primarily come from faculty ranks, it is not likely a coincidence that the MOS peer-review process is steeped in white supremacy, given the fact that the profession is, and has historically been, overwhelmingly white. Because the anti-Blackness of the MOS peer-review process is simply part of a larger white supremacist business academy (Nkomo, 1992), our work builds on this foundation of knowledge to make clear one of the most pernicious effects of white supremacy in the business academy; anti-Black bias in the peer-review process bolstered by performative allyship. We recommend addressing the anti-Black bias in the peer-review process by disrupting the whiteness of MOS gatekeepers. To chip away at this anti-Blackness, we call attention to the work by critical management scholars to disrupt discriminatory MOS structures.

For example, Minefee et al. (2018) explain how whiteness persists throughout the business academy, from doctoral education to the faculty hiring and promotions processes to administration. They describe this exclusion of Black, Latinx, and Native American faculty as social closure, a process by which the hegemony of whiteness persists by preserving the status quo and by restricting opportunities to outsiders (e.g. Black people). Stewart et al. (2008) examine the pipeline to business faculty by exploring the factors that shape Black and Latino applicants’ decisions to pursue a business doctoral degree. Subsequently, Grier and Poole (2020) look more deeply at the role of racism in the faculty hiring processes that ultimately reproduce whiteness. As a final example, Moshiri and Cardon (2019) show that more diverse business schools are more likely to have formal structures of authority (at the university and at the business school level) to hold their schools accountable for faculty diversity goals. A strategic plan to systemically disrupt whiteness in MOS gatekeeping is for journals to embed broad financial institutional support for organizations that inherently work to diversify the business school professoriate, such as the PhD Project, The Tenure Project, and the Management Faculty of Color Association.

Discussion

The goal of our article is to join and extend the research aimed at legitimizing Black scholarship. We sought to accomplish this by relying on CRT to describe the epistemic injustice of performative allyship within the peer-review process and to explain why these acts of performative allyship obstruct the development of Black scholarship. To explain these acts, we collectively shared our personal experiences with our scientific freedom and desire to advance Black scholarship being restricted in an unfair manner. We have also provided three straightforward actions for MOS journal reviewers and editors to take if they have a genuine desire to advance Black scholarship. These actions will help MOS journal editors and reviewers transition from gatekeepers to door-openers, which is critical to the advancement of Black scholarship. To this end, we believe our manuscript has important theoretical implications for MOS.

Theoretical implications

We believe our research contributes to a growing literature focused on explaining the value of Black scholarship and why it should be viewed as a standalone legitimate body of knowledge. Whereas prior scholars have focused on the roles of epistemic injustice more broadly (Muzanenhamo and Chowdhury, 2023), intellectual activism (Collins, 2013; Contu, 2018, 2020), denial of the centrality of race in MOS (Cox, 1990; Nkomo, 1992, 2021), and the problematic denial of slavery and anti-Black racism in MOS (Cooke, 2003; Opie and Roberts, 2017), we focus on how performative allyship, as a particular form of epistemic injustice within the peer-review process, obstructs the advancement of Black scholarship. Specifically, we explain how predominantly publishing Black scholarship in special issues, primarily typecasting Black scholarship to racial differences research, and publicly soliciting Black scholarship while allowing anti-Black racial bias to go unchecked in the peer-review process are not only acts of performative allyship, but also restrict the development of Black scholarship. Subsequently, we believe highlighting the concept of anti-Black performative allyship is key to understanding the challenges associated with legitimizing Black scholarship.

This research also contributes to the body of work that shows the value of narrative accounts to understand how authors’ identities are a valuable and critical aspect of the research process. Like King et al. (2018) research on subjectivity and subtle bias in the review process, we rely on theory and evidence to argue that Black scholarship “may be subject uniquely to particularly problematic forms of systematic subjectivity” (p. 845) and deeply embedded subtle anti-Black bias. Therefore, we also “describe examples from our own experience to illustrate these possibilities” (King et al., 2018: 845) of performative allyship in the review process. This is because empiricism ranging from narrative accounts to autoethnographies are both scholarly and therapeutic (Ellis, 2004; Van de Berg, 2022). We extend this work by explaining the challenges associated with advancing Black scholarship as Black MOS scholars.

Our research is also beneficial if MOS truly desires to bridge the research-practice gap. The research-practice gap refers to the disconnect between “the knowledge that academics are producing and the knowledge that practitioners are consuming” (Cascio and Aguinis, 2008: 1062). A recent study revealed that over 58% of Black employees reported that they have experienced some form of racial prejudice at work (Center for Talent Innovation, 2019). For example, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) has published practitioner-oriented readings on how organizations can support Black employees (Kroc, 2020). Whereas many practitioners are very interested in establishing racially just workplace environments (Roberts and Mayo, 2019) and what should be done to make workplaces more inclusive for Black employees, MOS has to increase its number of studies centered on Black employees as this would help bridge the research-practice gap.

Finally, our research adds to the number of recent critical essays regarding the MOS publication process made specifically by PhD Project/Management Faculty of Color Association members. Specifically, Avery et al. (2022) discussed the problem of racial bias in the publication process. Aguinis et al. (2022) discussed multiple factors that have converged to create what they described as the irresponsible research perfect storm and explained why a research-research gap exists in MOS. Roberson et al. (2024) detailed the glaring procedural inconsistencies, unnecessary challenges, and blatant disrespect that Black scholars can encounter in the peer-review process. The narrative accounts and experiences explained in our article also bring attention to another pressing matter that needs to be addressed and resolved, namely MOS engagement of performative allyship. This specific collection of critical essays can be summarized in the old proverbial saying, “Where there is smoke, there is fire.” It is up to journal editors and reviewers to take meaningful action to remedy the aforementioned issues or continue to let these longstanding issues burn, particularly causing harm to Black scholarship and the broader MOS research ecosystem.

Conclusion

In this time of racial reckoning, with affirmative action being repealed in university admissions processes and the backpedaling of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (Ray and Melaku, 2023), organizations that want to create and sustain equitable practices need to double down on confronting and dismantling systemic and internalized forms of anti-Black racism and bias that prevent real substantive change. This includes MOS and our journals. It is safe to say that Black scholarship is viewed as a legitimate body of knowledge by researchers who engage in Black scholarship. However, it is also clear that hegemonic actors within MOS, who often are gatekeepers at MOS journals, still devalue and marginalize Black scholarship. While we propose solutions to addressing performative allyship in the peer-review process, we understand that there are both individual and structural level solutions that strategically address the concerns we outlined. However, within this discourse we acknowledge that individuals are embedded within the institutional practices that sustain an inequitable peer-review process. We sought to explain how these actions contribute to MOS engaging in performative allyship, which obstructs the development of Black scholarship.

The mental and emotional labor associated with working to advance Black scholarship is important to recognize, which effectively results in an inclusion tax (Melaku, 2019, 2022, 2024) that scholars working in this field are forced to pay to be included within MOS. When allies refuse to transform oppressive systems, emotional labor and mental exhaustion fall on the intended beneficiaries of allyship (Erskine and Bilimoria, 2019; Melaku et al., 2020). We identify this as performative allyship. Similar to Roberson et al. (2024), we (the authors) have experienced the cognitive and emotional toll pursuing this line of research, which is generally not the case when we work on our non-Black scholarship research projects. Anger, hopelessness, and consistent bouts of asking ourselves “Is this worth it” or “Should we just give up” is our shared reality as we see our community being silenced, marginalized, and deemed unimportant in our field of study.

With every manuscript on Black scholarship that we submit, we hope that the MOS journal editor does not send it to be reviewed by all-white reviewers and we hope that we have at least one reviewer knowledgeable in Black scholarship. This is eerily similar to the feeling of despair when a Black person’s innocence or guilt is put in the hands of an all-white jury (Snowden, 2022). Juries formed from all-white jury pools convict Black defendants significantly more often than white defendants, but this gap in conviction rates is almost entirely eliminated when the jury pool includes at least one Black member (Anwar et al., 2012). Just as we hope for a fair trial in the U.S. legal system, we simply hope for a fair review process in our attempts to advance MOS. As explained by Spector (2019), “reviewers should be objective judges willing to give the paper a fair hearing” (p. 135). In other words, MOS journal editors and reviewers simply must stop moving the goalpost with respect to Black scholarship.

In closing, we note that in 2021 a collective of nurses called for their profession to oppose police brutality against Black Americans, and that by “acknowledging and confronting [their] profession’s complicity in structural racism in healthcare via systems of policing, nurses can uphold [their] ethical code and maintain societal trust with [their] actions” (Jeffers et al., 2021: 2). Similarly, MOS must hold ourselves accountable for our practices that undermine and derail Black scholarship. We hope our research and corrective actions are implemented by editors and reviewers so that Black scholarship can be celebrated and liberated in a manner that makes the MOS peer-review process more inclusive and equitable. This is a renewed call to bring attention to epistemic injustice and to challenge MOS to create a more inclusive and equitable process that allows for the building of a more just world, within the field and throughout society.