Statements of Value vs. Statements of Action: Exploring Organizational Responses to COVID-19 and Race in 2020

Drawing on a content analysis of statements from Fortune 500 companies, US News and World Report’s top 100 universities, and Forbes’ top 100 nonprofits, this project captures and analyzes organizational responses to COVID and issues of racial inequality in the US. Both issues were central in US life in 2020. We explore two questions: How did organizations talk about COVID and race-related issues in 2020? Relatedly, was there any variation in the presence and content of organizational statements about these two issues? Based on their statements, COVID pushed organizations to produce tangible responses grounded in actions aimed at reducing the impact of the pandemic, while race-related issues generated condemnations of racism attached to abstract reflections on the implication of racial inequality or calls for further discussion of the issue. As ubiquitous as both issues were in the US, any talk of a “national conversation” around these topics misleadingly obscures important variation in how organizations talked about these concurrent social issues. Across organizational type, the contrast in how companies talked about both issues suggests that robust organizational engagement with broader social issues can happen, but organizations are selective in choosing which issues garner deep, action-oriented engagement.