that voluntarily disclosed their racial diversity data in annual reports to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The corporations included Apple, Facebook, eBay and Verizon.in the companies' workforces, with only 3% of senior management positions filled by Black employees and 4% by Hispanic/Latino employees. The reports as a whole also showed little progress in improving racial diversity from the previous year.
Participants who read the diversity reports viewed those companies as more transparent, trustworthy and genuinely committed to diversity than participants who didn't see the reports. Even though the diversity data in the reports was predominantly negative, participants believed those companies had made significantly more progress in advancing diversity than when companies concealed that data.
The race of the participants didn't affect the findings except for some evidence that Black participants were less prone to view transparency as a sign of a company's genuine commitment to racial diversity.