The Stakeholder Podcast: Leadership, Inequality and Power

Is power inherently bad? Why do social class disparities emerge in organizations, and how can those organizations mitigate inequality — do they try to change hearts and minds or focus internal structure?

In The Stakeholder Podcast, Professor Ed Freeman connects with business leaders, policymakers and scholars across academic areas to examine ethics, leadership, finance and the state of the world. On a recent episode, he spoke with Professor Peter Belmi, an expert in power, status, and the social-psychological forces that contribute to the reproduction of hierarchies and inequality.

Belmi’s work investigates beyond the -isms that can serve as barriers to equality. For example, his research has shown that cutthroat environments of self-promotion discourage people from lower-class backgrounds from competing for power in the first place; it’s not worth it for personal gain. But if they instead consider how their influence could benefit their communities and the people they care about, they’re more likely to pursue positions of leadership.

Here the Darden professors discuss why we should enforce civility as a norm in organizations, the discipline of listening, the dangers of social media, equal-opportunity jerks and “the Spiderman rule.”

About the Expert

Peter Belmi

Scott C. Beardsley Associate Professor of Business Administration

Belmi seeks to understand why rich people are rich, why poor people are poor, and why social disparities between the rich and the poor persist over time. To answer these questions, he examines the social psychological forces that contribute to the reproduction of hierarchies and social inequality. In one line of research, he examines the subtle and insidious ways in which mainstream institutions block disadvantaged group members from getting to the top. In another line of research, he investigates how organizations and critical gateways create motivational barriers that discourage disadvantaged group members from pursuing their goals.

Belmi’s research has been published in top-tier journals, including Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Discoveries, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, as well as featured in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune, The Huffington Post and Financial Times.

B.A., Ateneo de Manila University; M.S., San Francisco State University; Ph.D., Stanford Graduate School of Business

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About the Expert

R. Edward Freeman

University Professor; Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration; Academic Director, Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics; Co-Academic Director, Institute for Business in Society

Freeman is best known for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics, in which he suggests that businesses build their strategy around their relationships with key stakeholders. His expertise also extends to areas such as leadership, corporate responsibility and business strategy. Since writing the award-winning book Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach in 1984, countless scholars, business leaders and students worldwide have cited Freeman’s work.

Freeman also wrote Managing for Stakeholders: Survival, Reputation and Success and Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art.

B.A., Duke University; Ph.D., Washington University

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