Fostering opportunities for Black professionals in Canada’s business discipline
Purpose: This study investigates diversity in the Business professions across the continuum of the profession - from high school students, university students, working professionals to board directors. More specifically, research investigates the barriers that prevent Black people from participating in the business discipline in Canada. Working with Students Against Anti-Black Racism, the John Ware Institute and the Directors College, this research will engage members of the Jane and Finch community, which has the highest number of Black people and immigrants per capita in Ontario, and provide resources, opportunities and networks that will support diversification in business.
The study is the first Canadian business study to document the data on Black students and professionals. It will employ case studies, focus groups and workshops that include educators and employers and use field experiments to test the impact on training, mentoring and placement for getting Black directors on boards. An understanding of the challenges will allow us propose ways to increase the participation of Black peoples on boards and in the business discipline.
We use three types of data collection (e.g. web surveys, semi-structured telephone interviews, and focus groups) to collect important information from high school students, university students, working professionals, senior accounting professionals/executives and board members to investigate the challenges and barriers that prevent Black people from participating in business disciplines, with an additional focus on proposing solutions and highlighting success factors that are likely to increase participation.
You will be invited to participate in an online survey, in-depth interview, and/or focus group. You can participate in all 3 activities. You will be paid a honorarium for your participation in interviews and focus groups where you’ll be asked questions about how and why you joined a board. You’ll also be asked questions about your life, educational and professional experience including challenges and factors that have increased your likelihood of success as a director. The time commitment is 1-2 hours per interview and up to 2 interviews.
There will be a conference next year and we plan to conduct additional interviews and focus groups (voluntary). More information will be sent out by email.
You will be paid a honorarium for your participation in the Interviews. You may derive intrinsic rewards, knowing that the research findings will be disseminated so that future students and professionals and policy makers can benefit from your experiences and knowledge.
Your participation in the study is completely voluntary and you may choose to stop participating at any time. The data we collect from you will be deleted immediately if you withdraw from or do not complete the interview. Your decision not to volunteer, to stop participating, or to refuse to answer particular questions will not influence the nature of the ongoing relationship you may have with the researchers or study staff, nature of your relationship with York University either now, or in the future. If you stop participating, you will still be eligible to receive the promised pay/compensation for agreeing to be in the project, even if you withdraw without completion of the research. Should you wish to withdraw after the study, you will have the option to also withdraw your data up until the analysis is complete”.
We do not foresee any risks or discomfort from your participation in the research.
Unless you choose otherwise all information you supply during the research will be held in confidence and unless you specifically indicate your consent, your name will not appear in any report or publication of the research.
The principal investigator will keep a link that identifies you to your coded information, but this link will be kept secure and available only to the principal, co-investigators and doctoral /post-doc research team members. Any information that can identify you will remain confidential.
You data will be safely stored on a secure password protected data storage (such as dropbox or sharepoint) and only research staff/research team members will have access to this information. Confidentiality will be provided to the fullest extent possible by law.
The data collected in this research project may be used in an anonymized, or de-identified form by members of the research team in subsequent research investigations exploring similar lines of inquiry. Such projects will still undergo ethics review by the HPRC, our institutional REB. Any secondary use of anonymized data by the research team will be treated with the same degree of confidentiality and anonymity as in the original research project.
Please note that at the end of the study, anonymized, or de-identified data may be deposited into one or more publicly accessible scientific repositories, such as York University Dataverse, an institutional research data repository, managed by York University Libraries and provided by Scholars Portal on behalf of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), through which researchers from around the world will have access to these data for future research, through a CC, CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, or other standard data sharing license.
For Telephone interviews and focus groups, data will be collected using Zoom Phone which is an externally hosted cloud-based service or in-person. Interviews and Focus groups will be recorded (audio, video or both). When information is transmitted over the internet privacy cannot be guaranteed. There is always a risk your responses may be intercepted by a third party (e.g., government agencies, hackers). Further, while York University researchers will not collect or use IP addresses or other information which could link your participation to your computer or electronic devices without informing you, there is a small risk with any platform such as this of data that is collected on external servers falling outside the control of the research team. If you are concerned about this, we would be happy to make alternative arrangements (where possible) for you to participate, perhaps via telephone.
Recordings (audio/video) will be saved in a password protected file to research team members’ local computer, not the cloud based service
Please note that it is the expectation that participants agree not to make any unauthorized recordings of the content of a meeting / data collection session.
Associate Professor Akolise Ufodike from the School of Administrative Studies at York University and Associate Professor, Oliver Okafor from Toronto Metropolitan University, and Institute for Social Research at York University are conducting this research. This research has received SSHRC funding.
Professor Ufodike’s research investigates the barriers that prevent Black people from participating in the business discipline in Canada. Working with Students Against Anti-Black Racism, the John Ware Institute and the Directors College, his research will engage members of the Jane and Finch community, which has the highest number of Black people and immigrants per capita in Ontario, and provide resources, opportunities and networks that will support diversification in business.
The study is the first Canadian business study to document the data on Black students and professionals. It will employ case studies, focus groups and workshops that include educators and employers and use field experiments to test the impact on training, mentoring and placement for getting Black directors on boards.
If you have any questions about this research study, please feel free to send an email to Stella Park, Project Manager, by phone at 416-736-5446 or by e-mail at pstella@yorku.ca and Dr. Akolisa Ufodike at (ufo@yorku.ca).
This research has received ethics review and approval by the Human Participants Review Sub-Committee, York University’s Ethics Review Board and conforms to the standards of the Canadian Tri-Council Research Ethics guidelines. If you have any questions about this process, or about your rights as a participant in the study, please contact the Sr. Manager & Policy Advisor for the Office of Research Ethics, 3rd Floor, Kaneff Tower, York University (telephone 416-736-5914 or e-mail ore@yorku.ca).
This research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
