Google's Diversity Strategy: PR, Ethics, and Workplace Culture
This paper examines Google's public relations approach to managing its workplace diversity controversies, focusing on the fallout from the James Damore memo and related lawsuits. It analyzes Google's strategy of public transparency—releasing employee demographic data and promoting diversity initiatives through digital and social media—against the backdrop of competing legal and political pressures. The paper applies two communication models, the Public Information Model and the two-way asymmetrical model, to evaluate how Google shaped its narrative. Ethical implications of the company's PR efforts, the parties affected, and lessons applicable to similar corporate diversity cases are also discussed.
- Introduction: Diversity as Business Strategy: Google's diversity controversies and competing lawsuits
- Public Relations Objective and Strategy: Google's transparency campaign and four-step diversity strategy
- Tactics: Digital and Social Media: Blog posts, Twitter programs, and social media backlash
- Ethical Implications and Affected Parties: Ethical stakes, Damore's complaints, and PR obligations
- Communication Theories and Decision-Making: Public Information Model and two-way asymmetrical model applied
- Conclusion: Transparency as Google's core PR solution
✍️ How to write this paper — guide, tools & examples ▾
What makes this paper effective
- Grounds its analysis in specific, documented events—the Damore memo, Google's demographic disclosure, and the resulting lawsuits—giving the argument a concrete factual foundation.
- Balances perspectives from multiple stakeholders (conservative critics, minority advocates, Google management), which strengthens its claim that the company faced pressure "from all sides of the aisle."
- Connects theoretical communication models (Public Information Model and two-way asymmetrical model) directly to observable PR decisions, demonstrating applied understanding of PR theory.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of a case-study framework: it isolates a real corporate controversy, breaks the organization's response into standard PR components (objective, strategy, tactics), and then evaluates those components against ethical and theoretical benchmarks. This structure allows the writer to move systematically from description to analysis to prescription.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with background on Google's diversity challenge, then moves sequentially through a PR audit (objective → strategy → tactics → ethical implications → affected parties), followed by a brief theoretical section applying two communication models, and closes with forward-looking advice and a summary conclusion. Each section builds on the previous one, keeping the argument focused on the central question of how Google managed its diversity narrative.
Introduction: Diversity as Business Strategy
As Harper (2017) notes, diversity is an increasingly important aspect of business strategy for many companies: it represents the desire by corporations to demonstrate greater corporate social responsibility and tie diversity promotion in with business success. Google, whose motto is "Do no evil," has long attempted to promote diversity in its workplace—but the tech company's success in promoting diversity for the benefit of business has not succeeded very well, and the company is now facing a number of lawsuits from workers who claim they have been targeted, harassed, and fired for holding a minority viewpoint.
A key case in point is James Damore, a white male with conservative views who publicly questioned Google's liberal bias (Nocera, 2018). The issue at Google is somewhat complex: Damore alleged that Google discriminates against white conservative males; former Google developer Tim Chevalier alleged that he was let go from the company for mounting a defense against discrimination of ethnic minorities made by white workers. Meanwhile, in its attempt to make the workplace more diverse, Google allegedly "told recruiters for certain jobs to consider candidates only 'from our underrepresented groups'…and to cancel interviews with white and Asian male job candidates and to purge applications that weren't women or minorities"—a form of reverse discrimination (Nocera, 2018).
In short, Google has been hit from all sides of the aisle when it comes to diversity: it has been accused of being too liberal and not liberal enough. In order to address the attacks from all directions, Google has had to come clean about what the diversity situation really looks like internally. In order to align its corporate social responsibility policy on diversity with its actual workplace culture, Google had to engage in considerable soul searching (McGirt, 2017) and help stakeholders get to the heart of the matter.
Public Relations Objective and Strategy
In order to manage the fallout from the James Damore letter and the lawsuit that resulted from his firing, Google launched a public relations campaign to show that it was proactively trying to "do no evil" when it comes to diversity in the workplace. On the Official Google Blog, Laszlo Bock, the company's Senior Vice President of People Operations, stated, "We've always been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of our workforce at Google. We now realize we were wrong, and that it's time to be candid about the issues" (Bock, 2014). The post revealed that 70% of Google's employees were male, 30% female, 61% white, 30% Asian, and the remaining 10% were of various other races and ethnicities.
McGregor (2014) acknowledged that Google's decision to release its worker demographics was a step in the right direction: one cannot help oneself until one admits there is a problem. McGregor (2014) noted that "while the numbers may not paint a rosy picture of diversity at Google, several advocates for getting more women and minorities into tech applauded the company's willingness to lead the way in sharing gender and racial demographics." Google's PR objective has been, therefore, to identify the facts, set the record straight, and establish its goals.
Google's strategy for addressing its diversity issues has been to open up about the company's lack of workplace diversity as a starting point. Prior to this disclosure, Google, like many other Silicon Valley tech companies, had never released such information. However, in order to address the issues raised by Damore, it released its demographics to demonstrate that its attempts to increase diversity were justified by the company's existing lack of diversity. Damore's complaints, however, were aimed more at the company's political diversity than at racial or ethnic diversity.
Armagan and Ferreira (2005) note "that four dimensions of political culture—nationalism, internationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism—influence firms' willingness to explore new opportunities and/or to exploit existing products and capabilities across borders" (p. 275). For Google, the strategy has been to conduct diversity training—but that only fanned the flames of the political bias that Damore was accusing the company of perpetuating (Pierson & Lien, 2017). According to Google's own Diversity page, this strategy includes four steps:
Tactics: Digital and Social Media
Google used its digital media blog to come clean on its lack of diversity in the workplace. Its diversity page identifies its strategic aims and offers links explaining in more detail how the company is addressing the diversity topic within its own walls. The company has also used its Google Blog to post articles related to how it is advancing its diversity expansion program—for example, via posts by the company's Global Diversity and Inclusion Director, Yolanda Mangolini, who posted during Black History Month about the important contributions that Google's Black Googler Network was making at the company (Mangolini, 2016).
Google has not so much used social media proactively as it has been the target of social media users in its efforts to boost workplace diversity. As Bergen and Huet (2017) note, "Some right-wing websites lionized Damore and accused the company of censoring conservative views." Moreover, the company's lack of a cohesive social media strategy allowed some opponents to interpret Damore's firing as confirmation "that the company's culture makes no room for dissenting political opinions" (Bergen & Huet, 2017). Instead, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a message internally to workers indicating that Damore's memo questioning the company's diversity policy was a violation of the "Code of Conduct and crossed the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace" (Bergen & Huet, 2017).
Still, Google has used Twitter to promote some of its programs, like #40Forward, "which works with organizations to increase the representation of female entrepreneurs in startup communities, and our baby-friendly startup school Campus for Moms" (Grove, 2015).
Conclusion
Google's solution to its diversity problem has been to open up and demonstrate transparency and accountability. By sharing its failings in the diversity department, its PR campaign allowed the truth to come out, which enabled the company to build on the facts in order to establish a new position going forward. This new position has been to promote its diversity-building achievements on its Official Blog and to decline engagement with the social media commentary from individuals attempting to undermine the company's diversity policy.
Armagan, S., & Ferreira, M. P. (2005). The impact of political culture on firms' choice of exploitation–exploration internationalization strategy. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 5(3), 275–291.
Badal, S., & Harter, J. K. (2014). Gender diversity, business-unit engagement, and performance. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 21(4), 354–365.
Bergen, M., & Huet, E. (2017). Google's firing of diversity critic fuels social-media backlash. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-firing-of-diversity-memo-writer-wins-praise-and-hostility
Bock, L. (2014). Getting to work on diversity at Google. Retrieved from https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/getting-to-work-on-diversity-at-google.html
Building a Google that works for everyone. (2018). Google Diversity. Retrieved from https://diversity.google/
Grove, M. (2015). Google demo day: Shining a light on female entrepreneurs. Retrieved from https://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/diversity
Harper, J. (2017). Webinar: First steps—The business case for diversity: Is this a silver bullet? Retrieved from http://www.catalyst.org/events/webinar-first-steps-business-case-diversity-silver-bullet
Mangolini, Y. (2016). Black Googler Network fuels inclusion at Google. Retrieved from https://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/diversity
McGirt, E. (2017). An inside look at how Google is embracing diversity. Retrieved from http://fortune.com/google-diversity/
McGregor, J. (2014). Google admits it has a diversity problem. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2014/05/29/google-admits-it-has-a-diversity-problem/
Nocera, J. (2018). Google has a diversity problem. And a lawsuit problem. Retrieved from https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-07/discriminating-against-white-men-isn-t-google-s-big-diversity-problem
Pierson, D., & Lien, T. (2017). Diversity training was supposed to reduce bias at Google. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-james-damore-google-20170809-story.html
Tiku, N. (2018). The dirty war over diversity inside Google. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/the-dirty-war-over-diversity-inside-google/
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.