East Coast Doctoral Conference · Columbia Business School · May 1, 2026

Strategic Identity Disclosure: Why Business Owners Disclose Marginalized Identities

Questions, pushback, and wild ideas welcome.

East Coast Doctoral Conference · Columbia Business School · May 1, 2026

Kyle Emory McCullers · Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

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Introduction

Three businesses. Same platform. Different choices.

No identity tags

Owner A

Brooklyn Blooms

Does not disclose any identity

Black-owned

Owner B

Brooklyn Tea

Discloses race

Black-owned LGBTQ+ Friendly Women-owned Latino-owned

Owner C

The Lit Bar

Discloses race, gender, and ethnicity

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The core tension

The same disclosure simultaneously attracts and repels

Black-owned businesses · 2020

"How The Black Lives Matter Movement Boosted Local Black-Owned Businesses"

GBH · 2021

⟷

"Black businesses still face systemic racism — even from well-meaning customers"

Washington Post · 2020

Asian-owned businesses · COVID-19

"The Best AAPI-Owned Businesses to Shop Right Now"

NBC News Select

⟷

"Reports of Anti-Asian hate crimes rose nearly 150% in major U.S. cities"

CBS News · 2021

Palestinian-owned businesses · 2023

"A Palestinian-owned business guide to show solidarity"

USA Today · 2023

⟷

"Jewish groups call for boycott of pro-Palestinian businesses"

Forward · 2023

Latino-owned businesses · 2024–2025

"Support Lake Street Latino businesses as immigration fears keep customers away"

Star Tribune · 2025

⟷

"Hispanic businesses in Montgomery feeling 'hunted' after triple-slaying"

NBC News · 2024

These are not parallel tracks — the solidarity signal is made necessary by discrimination exposure. Visibility attracts aligned customers and invites retaliation simultaneously.

Research Question

"Why, then, would an entrepreneur voluntarily disclose a characteristic that has historically served as a liability, thereby inviting potential bias in the pursuit of competitive advantage?"

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Theoretical Positioning

This paper sits at the collision of two literatures

Identity Theory

Goffman (1963)

Stigma management — individuals control information about discreditable attributes. The default is concealment or passing. Disclosure is a cost to be managed, not a strategy to be deployed.

Tajfel & Turner (1979)

Positive distinctiveness — group membership is claimed when it enables favorable social comparisons. Identity expression is driven by in-group psychology, not market calculation.

Both treat identity as a personal or relational phenomenon. Neither asks what happens when a business owner makes their stigmatized identity a public competitive signal.

Competitive Strategy

Porter (1980) · Barney (1991)

Sustainable advantage comes from positioning on resources that are valuable, rare, and difficult to imitate. If identity is such a resource, owners should deploy it.

Existing empirical work

Asks whether disclosing identity produces performance gains — and finds conflicting evidence (Aneja et al. 2025; Younkin & Kuppuswamy 2018). Takes the disclosure decision itself as given.

The disclosure decision is assumed to be an economic calculation — not something that itself requires a theoretical account.

Identity theory explains how stigmatized identities are managed. Strategy explains when resources produce advantage. This paper asks the question that precedes both: when does an owner treat their own identity as a resource at all — and what structural conditions make that choice possible?

In conversation with: Hwang & Phillips (2025) · entrepreneurship as exit from labor market discrimination among stigmatized populations — a supply-side complement to the disclosure decision examined here.

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The economic prior

We expect owners to disclose when returns exceed costs

Aneja, Luca & Reshef (2025)

Disclosing minority-owned status on a platform boosted traffic, calls, orders, and visits — demand effects concentrated in more Democratic, less racially biased areas (Aneja, Luca & Reshef, 2025).

Sharma, Frake & Watson (2025)

BLM drove a surge in symbolic support (reviews, ratings) for Black-owned businesses but produced no meaningful increase in substantive support (revenue, foot traffic) — outrage translated into likes, not dollars.

Neither source alone tells us why owners decide to disclose. Economic rationality predicts disclosure wherever returns are positive — yet disclosure clusters in ways market demand alone cannot explain.

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Theory

Classic rational choice doesn't tell us the entire story

Standard prediction: Disclose when E[returns] > E[costs].

But Aneja et al. show heterogeneous returns — two owners in the same city, same market, can face identical expected returns and still make opposite choices.

The missing piece

Disclosure is a two-stage decision.

Enabling conditions make it possible — activation triggers make it happen. Classic signaling theory only models the second stage (Spence, 1973).

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Theory

Classic rational choice doesn't tell us the entire story

E[Returns] Expected gains

>

E[Costs] Discrimination risk

→

Disclose Decision

E[Returns] Expected gains

<

E[Costs] Discrimination risk

→

Stay Silent Decision

But Aneja et al. show heterogeneous returns — two owners in the same city, same market, can face identical expected returns and still make opposite choices.

The missing piece

Disclosure is a two-stage decision.

Enabling conditions make it possible — activation triggers make it happen. Classic signaling theory only models the second stage (Spence, 1973).

Theory — Framework

A two-stage decision: structural prerequisites, then activation triggers

(A ∧ B ∧ C) ∧ (J ∨ K)

Stage 1 — All three required

A

Possesses a marginalized identity

B

Retains positioning discretion (owner-operator)

C

Holds legitimacy beliefs — views identity as a claimable competitive dimension

Stage 2 — Either suffices

J

Perceived community support — bounded solidarity (co-ethnic density) or generalized solidarity (values-aligned allies)

K

Personal identity commitment — discloses as moral obligation independent of market calculation

Stage 1 is structural — any absent condition forecloses disclosure before Stage 2 is reached. Stage 2 is perceived — owners differ even when structural conditions are identical.

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Theory

J has two forms — bounded and generalized solidarity

J₁ — Bounded Solidarity → H1

AudienceCo-ethnic in-group members MechanismExpected in-group reciprocity — co-ethnic residents extend preferential patronage based on shared identity ProxyBlack population share

"I know my neighborhood will show up"

Portes & Sensenbrenner, AJS (1993)

J₂ — Generalized Solidarity → H2

AudienceValues-aligned out-group allies MechanismPerceived legitimacy — community alignment with equity norms reduces disclosure cost and adds cross-group demand ProxyDemocratic vote margin

"The community broadly values what I'm doing"

Author's theoretical contribution (Greenberg & Mollick, 2017)

J fires when either form of solidarity is perceived. H3 tests whether the two forms amplify each other — the interaction is the paper's theoretically decisive test.

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Theory — Testable Predictions

Four hypotheses, each derived from the J framework

H1

Disclosure rates increase with Black population share. (Bounded solidarity — J₁)

H2

Disclosure rates increase with Democratic vote share. (Generalized solidarity — J₂)

H3

The J₁ effect is conditional: significant in Democratic counties, null in Republican counties. (Attenuation)

H4

The interaction does not predict Veteran-led disclosure. (Discriminant validity)

What we're measuring

Low Dem. Margin

High Dem. Margin

High Black
Pop.

J₁ only — bounded solidarity may activate but political safety uncertain

Both J₁ and J₂ — theory predicts highest disclosure

Low Black
Pop.

Neither condition — theory predicts lowest disclosure

J₂ only — ally market may compensate for thin in-group

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Data + Results

Google Maps as an empirical field site

4.99M U.S. business listings

3,144 Counties covered

Sept. 2021 Cross-section date

Identity tag system — opt-in, permanent until removed, publicly visible

Black-owned Women-owned LGBTQ+-owned Latino-owned Asian-owned Veteran-owned Indigenous-owned Disabled-owned

Google's identity tag system allows business owners to voluntarily self-report attributes. Tags appear as colored pill labels on the listing. Approximately 14,000 (0.28% of all listings; ~8.7% of 161,000 Census-identified Black-owned employer businesses) use the Black-owned attribute.

Unit of analysis: business listings geocoded to county. Outcome: Black-owned tag (0/1). Note: Census RDC application in progress for county-level Black-owned business counts — the correct at-risk denominator.

Scope: This analysis captures voluntary platform disclosure — a theoretically distinct act from MWBE certification or disclosure driven by government contracting eligibility, both of which carry strong and interpretable selection pressures not present here.

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Data + Results

Quadrant finding: disclosure concentrates where theory predicts

Low Black Pop

High Black Pop

High Dem Margin

0.12% Q2 — partial condition

          0.36%
          Q1 — both conditions met
        

Low Dem Margin

0.08% Q3 — lowest rate

0.12% Q4 — partial condition

Q1 is 3× the rate of Q3. The intersection of community size and political support matters.

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Data + Results

Main regression: OLS county-level disclosure rate

	H1 Bounded	H2 Generalized	H3 Attenuation	H4 Discriminant
Black pop. share (%)	0.090***	—	0.140***	—
	(0.010)		(0.023)
Dem. vote margin	—	0.015***	—	—
		(0.002)
Dem. majority (binary)	—	—	0.481***	—
			(0.076)
Black pop. × Dem. majority	—	—	−0.090**	—
			(0.031)
Veteran-led × Dem. majority	—	—	—	0.002
				(0.022)
State + industry FE	✓	✓	✓	✓
N (businesses)	152,794	152,794	152,794	152,794

Logit coefficients. Standard errors clustered by county in parentheses. *** p<.001, ** p<.01. H4 interaction is not significant (p=.93), establishing discriminant validity.

• Black population share: For every 10 percentage-point increase in a county's Black population share, the local disclosure rate rises by ~0.09 pp — roughly a 30% increase over the baseline of 0.29%.

• Democratic vote margin: For every 10-point swing toward Democrats, the disclosure rate rises by ~0.04 pp — political climate matters independently of community size.

• Interaction: The political-climate effect is roughly 25% larger in high-Black-population counties than low-population ones — solidarity and political environment amplify each other, not just add.

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Extending the findings · 2021 → 2026

Disclosure isn't a one-time signal — it persists where solidarity is high

78.8% Of 13,138 Black-owned disclosers in 2021
still disclosing in 2026

4.5pp Higher retention in Democratic-majority counties
(79.5% vs. 75.0%, p<.05)

What predicts retention?
Black population share (β=0.925, p<.001) and Democratic vote margin (β=0.608, p<.001) — the same solidarity structures that activate initial disclosure also sustain it. Extends H1 and H2 to persistence.

Where do owners drop off?
Highest drop-off: NH, OR, CO, IA, NM, UT — not the Deep South. The pattern is structural thinness: where the co-ethnic and ally customer base is too sparse to sustain the signal, disclosure quietly lapses.

Drop-off correlates with both lower Black population share and lower Democratic margin (r ≈ −0.21, p<.0001 each) — consistent with the bounded and generalized solidarity mechanisms operating jointly on persistence, not just entry.

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Interview voices · Ann Arbor & Detroit Metro

The decision in owners' own words

"I didn't realize how radical it was to say, I'm creating a black space for black people by black people... my being here, even being a successful entrepreneur, was an act of resistance."

Entrepreneurship educator · Detroit Metro · K: identity as resistance

"I'm going to drive that angle. But then there's also the dangerous side — I'm Jewish, but I'm not going to drive on that... that can be dangerous for business."

Boutique owner · Ann Arbor · Same owner — opposite disclosure across two identities

"I want to win the blind taste test every time. I don't want people to be like, 'Yeah, I liked hers because she was a white girl from Michigan and I identify with that.' I don't care about that. I think that is a crutch to me."

Food & beverage owner · Ann Arbor · Product Purist — identity as competitive dimension, rejected

"When we opened we were only 26... Koreans would come in from the suburbs. It was like a cult of party Koreans. And it did play a big role."

Restaurant owner · Ann Arbor · J₁: bounded solidarity through co-ethnic visibility

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Conclusion

What this paper contributes — and where it goes next

C1

Identity as a Conditional Strategic Resource

Brings identity theory and competitive strategy into contact: extends Goffman's stigma management — where the default is concealment — to market contexts where disclosure is an active competitive signal. Theorizes the decision that precedes any performance claim. This paper does not measure outcomes; it explains why some owners ever enter that calculation at all.

C2

Solidarity as a Geographically Structured Mechanism

Bounded and generalized solidarity are distinct mechanisms — not substitutes — that activate disclosure under different structural conditions. Disclosure rates are more than 3× higher where both are present. The "valuable" dimension of identity-as-resource is geographically contingent, not portable across contexts.

This paper responds to calls to center marginalized entrepreneurs in management research — Phillips et al. (Research in Organizational Behavior, 2024); Phillips & Ranganathan (ASQ, 2025).

Where this goes next

Census RDC

County-level Black-owned business counts — the correct at-risk denominator for estimating the true disclosure rate.

Companion Qualitative Study

In-depth interviews examining individual strategic orientations — the individual-level complement to the community-level quantitative patterns.

Longitudinal Tracking

2021→2026 panel reveals which owners sustain disclosure over time — extending H1 and H2 from initial decisions to strategic persistence.

Industry-Level Analysis

Disclosure norms vary substantially across industries. Within-industry tests will sharpen the solidarity mechanism and address heterogeneity concerns.

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East Coast Doctoral Conference · Columbia Business School · May 1, 2026

Thank You

Questions, pushback, and suggestions on theory, data, or framing are all welcome.

Kyle McCullers · kylemcc@umich.edu

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