Board Rooms Are Becoming More Politically Polarized
Study finds growing partisanship among top executives at the biggest US companies
For all the handwringing among US conservatives that companies are increasingly imposing their liberal social agenda on workers and customers, a new study finds that top executives have become more Republican, and c-suites more ideologically like-minded, over the past decade.
The share of Republican executives was 68% in 2020, up from 63% in 2008, according to a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The authors also found that in the same period executive teams have become about 8% more politically homogenous at S&P 1500 firms as measured by teams’ breakdowns of registered Republicans and Democrats. In short: Where a boardroom may once have been filled by a mix of Democrats and Republicans, it’s now more likely to be predominately red or blue.