TOP WOMAN: Identifying barriers to women's access to management

Despite some recent advances, women face more difficulties in accessing management positions. Previous research analyzed several types of barriers contributing to the maintenance of the glass ceiling, including factors such as gender stereotypes, difficulties in work–family balance, human resource policies, difficulties in accessing networks, organizational culture, and higher demands for women to demonstrate their value. The perception of the gender barriers can be different or may have a different value depending on the characteristics of specific organizations, teams, jobs, and employees. In this study, we develop the scale “TOP WOMAN” (Testing the Obstacles to Promotion of WOmen to MANagement) to measure barriers to women's promotion. The TOP WOMAN scale was carried out in a large sample from the financial sector in Spain (n = 1304 workers). The scale, composed of 33 items, identified seven dimensions: differential performance appraisal, gender stereotypes, work–family balance, motivational barriers, unfair human resource practices, organizational culture barriers, and barriers to accessing influential networks. The TOP WOMAN scale offers a practical tool to human resource managers to analyze the situation of gender discrimination and to implement best practices in their own organization.     

Response Generalization in Behavioral Safety

Abstract

This paper details concerns with the potential misuse of the term “response generalization” in the behavioral safety literature. Stokes and Baer's (1977) technologies of generalization and the basic literature on response induction are used to make the claim. Ludwig and Geller's (2000) Journal of Organizational Behavior Management special issue describing their work with pizza delivery drivers is used as an example. The potential problems of non-technical use of language in a technological behavioral science are briefly discussed. Finally, Baer, Wolf, and Risley's (1968, 1987) criteria of applied behavior analysis are re-visited in this context in hopes of calling researchers of organizational behavior management to more closely align their work with the tradition of applied behavior analysis.     

Labor Market Intermediaries and the New Paradigm for Human Resources

Labor market intermediaries (LMIs) are entities that stand between the individual worker and the organization that needs work done. They include well-known operations such as executive search firms that act as brokers to fill jobs and temp agencies that lease labor to clients but also less familiar entities such as professional employer organizations (PEOs) that take on the legal obligations of employment for clients. LMI's mediate between individual workers and the organizations that need work done, shaping how workers are matched to organizations, how tasks are performed, and how conflicts are resolved [Autor, D.H. (2009). Studies of labor market intermediation: Introduction. In D. Autor (Ed.), Studies of labor market intermediation (pp. 1–26). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press]. They essentially disintermediate aspects of management that had been performed by employers. The growth and increasing prominence of LMI's is important for all research associated with the workplace because we can no longer do a study of “workers” in an organization and assume that they are all employees: Some may be temps under contract to an agency, some may be “employed” by a PEO, some may work for vendors. The reason that matters is because LMI's appear to alter attitudes and behaviors on all sides. For example, they change the bilateral, employee–employer relationship into a three-way “triangular” relationship. They may well create “dual allegiance” issues, where individuals feel ties to the search firm that placed them in their current job and their employer or the agency that employs them and the client on whose behalf they are currently working. Most fundamentally, they challenge the existing paradigms we have used to understand the workplace: Does “attraction–selection–attrition” have any relevance, for example, when employers hire temps placed by agencies into permanent jobs? What does career development mean when the person with the most influence over your next job is a search consultant? There is already an extensive literature on LMIs, but it is spread across disciplines and fields and mainly examines the labor market outcomes associated with the use of LMIs. The literature lacks a management voice. We know relatively little about the effects of LMIs on workplace attitudes and behaviors, the central focus of organizational behavior; about how LMIs and the associated rise of outside hiring change how we should think about topics such as recruiting and selection, a central concern of personnel psychology; we know even less about how LMIs change the way firms think about competencies and boundaries of the firm, central topics in strategy, when the firm's workforce is actually employed by another organization or when it can be reshuffled very quickly. We develop a taxonomy of LMIs and use it to classify the burgeoning but disjointed literature on LMIs across the social sciences. We classify LMIs in terms of three main attributes of human resource (HR) practices that they perform: Information Providers, Matchmakers, and Administrators. We describe first how LMI activities differ from HR management practices performed by employers in the traditional relationship. Second, we outline the existing research about how LMIs affect employment outcomes, such as access to employment, wages, work-related attitudes and behaviors, working conditions, and skill development. Finally, we highlight the implications of LMIs for management research, especially new, understudied research questions that need to be addressed.     

THE TIMING OF LABOR TRANSFERS IN DUAL RESOURCE-CONSTRAINED SYSTEMS: “PUSH” VS. “PULL” RULES*

Altough the dual resource-constrained (DRC) system has been studied, the decision rule used to determine when workers are eligible for transfer largely has been ignored. Some earlier studies examined the impact of this rule [5] [12] [15] but did not include labor-transfer times in their models. Gunther [6] incorporated labour-transfer times into his model, but the model involved only one worker and two machines. No previous study has examined decision rules that initiate labor transfers based on labor needs (“pull” rules). Labor transfers always have been initiated based on lack of need (“push” rules). This study examines three “pull” variations of the “When” labor-assignment decision rule. It compares their performances to the performances of two “push” rules and a comparable machine-limited system. A nonparametric statistical test, Jonckheere's S statistic, is used to test for significance of the rankings of the rules: a robust parametric multiple-comparison statistical test, Tukey's B statistic, is used to test the differences. One “pull” and one “push” decision rule provide similar performances and top the rankings consistently. Decision rules for determining when labor should be transferred from one work area to another are valuable aids for managers. This especially is true for the ever-increasing number of managers operating in organizations that recognize the benefits of a cross-trained work force. Recently there has been much interest in cross-training workers, perhaps because one of the mechanisms used in just-in-time systems to handle unbalanced work loads is to have cross-trained workers who can be shifted as demand dictates [8]. If management is to take full advantage of a cross-trained work force, it need to know when to transfer workers.     

The Use of Anthropomorphizing as a Tool for Generating Organizational Theories

Abstract

Despite admonishments that anthropomorphizing represents a serious error in scientific thinking, this review shows that anthropomorphizing has been a critically important tool for developing influential theories in organization studies. Analyzing the literatures related to organizational identity and organizational knowledge reveals how organization theorists build on their rich and highly accessible understanding of humans (i.e. the self and others) to (1) make guesses and sense of organizational anomalies, (2) articulate theoretical mechanisms to build stronger theories, and (3) create plausible stories that facilitate sensegiving. Our review shows how some theorists by using particular approaches were able to use anthropomorphizing to generate new organizational theories, yet anthropomorphizing does not always lead to such salutary outcomes. Anthropomorphizing is less likely to enhance theorizing in organization studies when the theorist does not sufficiently doubt their guesses about organizational phenomena, fails to develop stronger explanations of the “how” and “why” of the theory thereby only partially exploring the social mechanisms underlying the proposed relationships, and fails in their attempts to tell the theory's “story”. We conclude with a discussion of the conditions under which anthropomorphizing is more or less effective.     

Women in high places: When and why promoting women into top positions can harm them individually or as a group (and how to prevent this)

This contribution focuses on women in leadership positions. We propose that two convictions are relevant to the effects of having women in high places. On the one hand, women as a group are expected to employ different leadership styles than men, in this way adding diversity to management teams. On the other hand, individual women are expected to ascend to leadership positions by showing their ability to display the competitiveness and toughness typically required from those at the top. We posit that both convictions stem from gendered leadership beliefs, and that these interact with women's self-views to determine the effectiveness of female leaders. We develop an integrative model that explains the interplay between organizational beliefs and individual-self definitions and its implications for female leadership. We then present initial evidence in support of this model from two recent programs of research. The model allows us to connect “glass cliff” effects to “queen bee” effects showing that both relate to the perceived salience of gender in the organization, as well as individual gender identities. Each of these phenomena may harm future career opportunities of women, be it as individuals or as a group. We outline how future research may build on our proposed model and examine its further implications. We also indicate how the model may offer a concrete starting point for developing strategies to enhance the effectiveness of women in leadership positions.     

Chemicals,companies, and countries: The concept of diffusion in management research

In the field of organizational behavior, the term “diffusion” has come to be implicitly paired with the concept of innovation and a peculiar set of conceptual choices. We explore how this came about, and examine the evolution of the concept “diffusion” from its inception in the English language through its use in the natural and social sciences to its current meaning in organizational research. A sensemaking perspective on researchers’ cognition helps us explain the changing meaning of the concept, and alerts researchers to the subtle but far-reaching effects of revisions in a field's conceptual language. Even though the field of organizational studies ostensibly treats diffusion as a neutral phenomenon, it implicitly narrates diffusion as a mechanical and positive process that should be welcomed and encouraged. The implications of this reframing become even more important with the increasing focus on innovation in recent diffusion studies. The diffusion of new products among consumers and the diffusion of market institutions around the world are things of a rather different nature and consequence, but treating them as implicitly equivalent “innovations” that “diffuse” naturalizes and hence legitimates them. We conclude by noting implications of our findings for exploring the evolution of meaning for other concepts, and their utilization in research on organizations.     

Performer-Level Systems Analysis

Abstract

A review of the Journal of Organizational Behavior Management(1992-2001) was conducted to determine how “systemic” the applied behavioral interventions were. Criteria for the term “systemic” in an organizational behavior context were derived from Rummler and Brache's (1995) Human Performance System (HPS). Six dependent measures derived from Rummler and Brache's HPS were used to evaluate the systemic nature of the interventions. The dependent variables were classified into one of three mutually exclusive categories: whether the variable was modified, discussed but not modified, or absent. The classification of variables was used to determine the degree to which an intervention was “systemic.” Results indicated that considerations of systemic factors were often modified and rarely merely discussed. A majority of the studies examined dealt with 2, 3, or 4 of the 6 systemic variables evaluated.     

Dimensions of work–home culture and their relations with the use of work–home arrangements and work–home interaction

Abstract

This study examined the associations of work–home culture with (a) demographic and organizational characteristics, (b) the use of work–home arrangements, and (c) negative and positive work–home interaction, among 1,179 employees from one public and two private organizations. Substantial support was found for a 2-factor structure of a work–home culture measure differentiating between “support” (employees’ perceptions of organization's, supervisors’, and colleagues’ responsiveness to work–family issues and to the use of work–home arrangements) and “hindrance” (employees’ perceptions of career consequences and time demands that may prevent them from using work–home arrangements). This 2-factor structure appeared to be invariant across organizations, gender, and parental status. Significant relationships with organizational characteristics, the use of work–home arrangements, and work–home interaction supported the validity of these two cultural dimensions. It is concluded that if employers want to minimize work–home interference, to optimize positive work–home interaction, and to boost the use of work–home arrangements, they should create a work–home culture that is characterized by high support and low hindrance.     

The existence of implicit bias is beyond reasonable doubt: A refutation of ideological and methodological objections and executive summary of ten studies that no manager should ignore

In this article, we respond at length to recent critiques of research on implicit bias, especially studies using the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Tetlock and Mitchell (2009) claim that “there is no evidence that the IAT reliably predicts class-wide discrimination on tangible outcomes in any setting,” accuse their colleagues of violating “the injunction to separate factual from value judgments,” adhering blindly to a “statist interventionist” ideology, and of conducting a witch-hunt against implicit racists, sexists, and others. These and other charges are specious. Far from making “extraordinary claims” that “require extraordinary evidence,” researchers have identified the existence and consequences of implicit bias through well-established methods based upon principles of cognitive psychology that have been developed in nearly a century's worth of work. We challenge the blanket skepticism and organizational complacency advocated by Tetlock and Mitchell and summarize 10 recent studies that no manager (or managerial researcher) should ignore. These studies reveal that students, nurses, doctors, police officers, employment recruiters, and many others exhibit implicit biases with respect to race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, social status, and other distinctions. Furthermore—and contrary to the emphatic assertions of the critics—participants’ implicit associations do predict socially and organizationally significant behaviors, including employment, medical, and voting decisions made by working adults.     

System justification in organizational contexts: How a Motivated preference for the status quo can affect organizational attitudes and behaviors

In this chapter, we put forth the premise that people's motivated tendency to justify and defend their external systems has important, and largely unexplored, implications for the field of organizational behavior. Drawing on recent theoretical and empirical work emerging from System Justification Theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994), we propose that people's desire to view prevailing structural arrangements in a positive light may uniquely contribute to our understanding of the psychology of people in organizational settings. We begin by specifically highlighting System Justification Theory's implications for: organizational change, employee citizenship behaviors, and integration of a diverse workforce. We then review empirical work on the situations in which people's system-justification motive is likely to be particularly pronounced and discuss how these situations may manifest in organizational contexts. Following this, we describe several streams of research on the consequences of the system-justification motive, with a focus on the implications of these findings for organizational members’ perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors in the workplace.     

Men Doing and Undoing Gender at Work: A Review and Research Agenda

While research on gender in organizations has not only documented sustained gender inequality, it has also offered an understanding of how gender is enacted through doing and undoing gender. An underexplored aspect concerns how men can do and undo gender to support or hinder gender equality processes in organizations. Doing gender is then understood as creating gender difference while undoing gender would conversely mean to reduce gender difference. The former is supporting gender inequality while the latter means moving toward gender equality. This article therefore provides a systematic review of empirical articles that discuss how men are doing and undoing gender within an organizational context. It is shown that undoing gender practices of men in organizations are under‐researched and a research agenda of how men can undo gender at work is thus developed. This article makes a two‐fold contribution: first it offers a refinement of doing and undoing gender approaches and second, it develops a research agenda for exploring how men can undo gender at work.     

Endogenous Adaptation: The Effects of Technology Position and Planning Mode on IT‐Enabled Change*

The redesign of information technology (IT)‐enabled work processes often necessitates fundamental design changes to the intended work process, the IT platform hosting the work process, or both. Research suggests that such design changes often can be traced to earlier decisions involving endogenous adaptation or internal organizational change. Two such decisions are a firm's technology position and planning mode. This study examines the relationship between technology position and planning mode in predicting the magnitude of design change in process redesign projects. The conceptual frame applied in examining these relationships involves a synthesis of Miles and Snow's adaptive cycle with elements central to concurrent engineering. Our results indicate that the magnitude of design change is related to differences in technology position and planning mode. To effectively implement organizational change, firms must leverage their IT platform by carefully timing IT investments in accordance with their adopted technology position. Directing the trajectory of a firm's IT platform and deploying it so as to complement the firm's technology position reduces design uncertainty, promoting reengineering success.     

Putting the “psychic” Back in Psychic Distance: Awareness,Perceptions, and Understanding as Dimensions of Psychic Distance

Unlike the IB literature whose emphasis within the term ‘psychic distance’ has been more on “distance” and less on “psychic,” our starting point is all “psychic” and no “distance,” assuming distance is defined as the difference between two countries. We propose that psychic distance be centered on the firm's managers and explain how their cognitive limitations, perceptions, heuristics, and experiences interact with a foreign environment to influence their decision making. We replace the conventional definition of distance with the cognitive dimensions of managerial awareness, perceptions, and understanding. Awareness captures the manager's consciousness of foreign context elements relevant to the firm's decision, perception is the manager's interpretation of the extent of these relevant environmental elements, and a manager's understanding captures the relationships among these context elements and the firm's decision. We argue that a multidimensional psychic distance construct is necessary as many of distance's problems are due to the illusion it promises of capturing a manager's perception of a complex foreign environment in a single number. Our approach eliminates distance's problems of symmetry and linearity. It also eliminates the constraint that distance is only associated with negative outcomes. After explaining the theoretical value of awareness, perception, and understanding by developing propositions predicting context traps, we present our operationalization of psychic distance.     

The dual effect of board gender diversity on R&D investments

We examine how gender diversity on boards of directors affects investment in research and development (R&D), thereby providing the platform for future ambidexterity of the organization. Using quantitative data from 44 countries, that are exemplified by qualitative data, our findings show that gender diverse boards result in more complex organizational outcomes in regard to R&D investment than assumed originally. Our findings show that gender diverse boards encourage ambidexterity. On the one hand, increased gender diversity has a negative direct effect on R&D. However by positively affecting equity based remuneration, these diversified boards actually encourage indirectly higher R&D investments that are better correlated with the organization goals. Gender diversity on boards, therefore, encourages organizational behavior that increases the chances for higher ambidexterity over time by encouraging exploitative behavior as well as explorative behavior.     

Ethics and human resource management and development in a global context: case study of an Indian multinational

A firm's orientation to ethics is influenced largely by its national and organizational culture. Research shows that a growing number of Indian firms place a distinct emphasis on long-term orientation to business strategy with a social mission, underpinned by firm commitment to core organizational values, employee development and welfare. Through a case study of a large Indian multinational conglomerate, this article provides preliminary evidence of how some emerging economy firms are successfully mixing and matching indigenous business and people management strategies with the Western emphasis on meritocracy and professionalism to compete in the contemporary global economy. It further shows how the human resource development (HRD) discipline can play a pro-active role in embedding ethics and values throughout the organizational and HR architecture. The HRD professionals in the case study firm also face several structural and cultural challenges in discharging their ethics-driven HR mandate, such as management's ethnocentric attitude to global staffing and clash of work cultures.     

David v. Goliath: A Brief Assessment of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2011 Ruling Denying Class Certification in Dukes v. Wal‐Mart

In 2001, Betty Dukes, then a 54‐year‐old African American, filed suit against her employer, Wal‐Mart, alleging that she had been the victim of gender discrimination. Ms. Dukes alleged that Wal‐Mart, the nation's largest private employer, routinely paid women less than men for comparable work and arbitrarily favored men over women in promotion decisions. In 2004, a U.S. District Court entered an order granting class certification, potentially extending the retailer's financial liability to thousands of current and past Wal‐Mart employees. At that time, the Wal‐Mart suit was the largest class action lawsuit ever approved in the United States. In 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the lower court's ruling. Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia cited Wal‐Mart's long‐standing explicit gender‐neutral employment policy and the decentralized manner in which local managers have discretion to adjust salaries and recommend applicants for promotion—factors that led the majority to question “the glue” binding the class together. Proponents of the Court's decision hailed the ruling as a victory for business and a step in the direction of needed legal reform. Critics viewed the decision as another in a series of defeats for minority interests by a pro‐business, ideologically divided Court. Did the Court get it right, or is this yet another example of might defeating right?