Tag Archives: gender

Organizational Culture: Attracting Job Applicants by Advertising the “Softer Side”

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Topic: Recruiting, Gender
Publication: Journal of Business and Psychology (WINTER 2010)
Article: The impact of organizational culture on attraction and recruitment of job applicants
Authors: D. Catanzaro, H. Moore, T.R. Marshall
Reviewed By: Rebecca Eckart

Organizational culture is typically described as the collective set of values and norms shared by members of an organization. Recently, researchers have started to categorize organizational cultures as either being “supportive” or “competitive” in nature. Supportive cultures value collaboration, equality, supportiveness, and work-life balance, whereas organizations with a competitive culture typically value individualism, ambition, rewards, and a focus on one’s career.

In a recent study, Catanzaro, Moore, and Marshall (2010) examined how beliefs about the organization’s culture impacts male and female applicants’ job pursuit, organizational preference, and organizational choice. They found that overall, both men and women would rather pursue a job with a supportive organization, even if that meant accepting less compensation. However, when presented with a job in a competitive organizational culture, men are more likely than women to pursue the job. Participants indicated that they would rather work for the supportive organization because it allows for more work-life balance and appears more concerned for its employees.

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Employee Burnout: Is It the Same for Men and Women?

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Topic: Burnout
Publication: Journal of Vocational Behavior (OCT 2010)
>Article: Gender Differences in Burnout: A meta-analysis
Authors: R.K. Purvanova; J.P. Muros
Reviewed by: Mary Alice Crowe-Taylor

Do both men and women experience burnout? Yes. Do men and women experience burnout differently? Yes. In a meta-analysis that includes the results of 183 studies, burnout appears to be an equal opportunity downer, but, sometimes, in different ways, for men and women. On the first burnout component, depersonalization, men are more likely to experience it than women (57% of men and 43% of women report feeling the need to shut-off and withdraw when stressed at work). On the second component of burnout, emotional exhaustion, women are slightly more likely to exhibit it (54% of women and 46% of men studied feel emotionally and physically depleted at work).

Why, then, do you hear the rumor that women experience burnout more? The problem is that depersonalization is often not recognized. Many of the measures of burnout tap only emotional exhaustion and therefore, identify burnout among women more. Men experiencing depersonalization may not be indicated as “burnt out”. Companies may not see the need to assist men with burnout, and the myth that burnout is a female experience is perpetuated. A lack of resources for helping both men and women cope with burnout results in its costly effects: decrease in performance, satisfaction, commitment, health and, ultimately, turnover. These outcomes can be avoided with the availability of resources for both male and female employees such as more respite time, flexible work scheduling, more support for child and elder care, and better healthcare alternatives to name a few.

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Organizational Culture: Attracting Job Applicants by Advertising the “Softer Side”

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Topic: Culture, Recruiting, Gender
Publication: Journal of Business and Psychology (WINTER 2010)
Article: The impact of organizational culture on attraction and recruitment of job applicants
Authors: D. Catanzaro, H. Moore, T.R. Marshall
Reviewed By: Rebecca Eckart

As top talent becomes sparse but human capital continues to be a chief competitive advantage, the ability to recruit highly skilled applicants is paramount. Additionally, modern organizations have the added hurdle of attracting job applicants that also fit well with the values of the organization. Organizational culture is typically described as the collective set of values and norms shared by members of an organization. Recently, researchers have started to categorize organizational cultures as either being “supportive” or “competitive” in nature. Supportive cultures value collaboration, equality, supportiveness, and work-life balance, whereas organizations with a competitive culture typically value individualism, ambition, rewards, and a focus on one’s career.  

In a recent study, Catanzaro, Moore, and Marshall (2010) examined how beliefs about the organization’s culture impacts male and female applicants’ job pursuit, organizational preference, and organizational choice. They found that both men and women would rather pursue a job with a supportive organization, even if that meant accepting less compensation. However, when presented with a job in a competitive organizational culture, men are more likely than women to pursue the job.

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Liberty, Justice, and…an Equal Chance at a Promotion for All?

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Topic: Gender, Mentoring
Publication: Harvard Business Review (SEP 2010)
Article: Why men still get more promotions than women
Author: H. Ibarra, N. M. Carter, and C. Silva
Reviewed By: Liz Brashier

We’re constantly hearing about the advances that organizations are making in corporate gender diversity. Women are being promoted, paid well, and mentored in the workplace! Right? According to Ibarra, Carter, and Silva (2010), the answer might be closer to “yes and no.”

In a corporate climate in which women’s progression to the upper tiers of management is the current “hot topic” in diversity, it would seem that mentoring programs might just be the solution. Pairing high potential women with executive mentors, it would appear, would lead to promotions. The authors argue, though, that it’s the quality of the mentoring that really matters here – and not all mentoring is created equal. There’s actually a special type of mentoring, called sponsorship, that makes all the different in those promotions to upper-level roles.

Sponsorship is important in that the mentor is not just providing feedback for the mentee, but is goes above and beyond to use his or her influence; in sponsorship, the mentor advocates with senior executives on behalf of the mentee.

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Are Femininity and Letters of Recommendation at Odds?

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Topic: Gender, Selection
Publication: Journal of Applied Psychology
Article: Gender and Letters of Recommendation for Academia: Agentic and Communal Differences
Authors: J. M. Madera, M. R. Hebl, & R. C. Martin
Reviewed By: Katie Bachman

To answer the question posed in the title: yes, they are. In a set of two studies, researchers have shown that women tend to be described with communal terms in letters of recommendation, while men tend to be described in agentic terms. Communal in this sense means using words like “helpful,” “kind,” and “agreeable.” Agentic refers to words like “assertive,” “confident,” and “independent.” Both sets of terms can be highly positive—we need both kinds of people—but it all goes down hill for the communal types when it comes to hireability.

When people did not know the gender of the applicant, those applicants described in communal terms were deemed less hireable by subject matter experts (SMEs). Agentic terms didn’t really make a difference in the hireability of an applicant. Interestingly, men writing recommendations for women described them in more agentic terms than did women writing recommendations for women. So ladies, get those men writing your letters, especially if you’ve got a tendency to be nice! The meek shall not inherit the Earth. Assertiveness wins the day (go figure). At least, that seems to be the case with letters of recommendation.

Madera, J. M., Hebl, M. R., & Martin, R. C. (2009). Gender and letters of recommendation for academia: Agentic and communal differences. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94, 1591-1599.

Customer Satisfaction Surveys: A Measure of Race and Gender. A Measure of Performance? Not So Much

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Topic: Fairness, Diversity, Performance Appraisal

Publication: Academy of Management Journal
Article: An examination of whether and how
racial and gender biases influence customer satisfaction

Authors: D. R. Hekman, K. Aquino, B. P.
Owens, T. R. Mitchell, P. Schilpzand, & K. Leavitt

Reviewed By: Katie Bachman


Balance  There’s this great
line in the 1980 movie, 9 to 5, when Jane Fonda says to Dabney Coleman: “You’re a sexist,
egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” and he replies: “So I have a few
faults; who doesn’t?” Keep that in mind when you think about the Average Joe on
the street, filling out a survey. Untrained raters don’t rate accurately—that’s
why they need training! Customer satisfaction surveys are the epitome of using
untrained raters to measure employee performance.

For organizations
attempting to become more customer service-oriented, customer satisfaction
surveys seem like a good way to measure performance. You might get an accurate
rating if you’re White and male, but minorities and women can be hurt by these
types of ratings. Bias seeps into the rating process, which is a big time legal
no-no, particularly if such ratings are used as criteria for promotion and
compensation. In three separate studies—two in the field and one in the
lab—researchers determined that women and minorities were consistently rated
lower on customer satisfaction, even when performance was the same. Obviously,
this relationship was even stronger when the rater held negative attitudes
toward these groups. Additionally, the negative ratings given to minority and
female employees also affect customer ratings of the organization. It’s not
enough that customers like your employees a little less for being non-White or
female, they also like your company a little less.

Why is this happening?
Anonymity probably has something to do with it. Surveys almost never ask
customer raters to identify themselves so people feel freer to let their
attitudes affect their judgments. Also, there’s a lack of standards and
training for most of these surveys. Raters without training may rely on their
gut reactions more so than individuals trained to focus on observed behavior.

So what does this mean
for an organization? Customer satisfaction surveys need to be taken with a
grain of salt and probably not used for employment decisions. Customers will rate identical work
as less satisfactory if a woman or minority performs it (no word in this
article about the double whammy: female minorities). If you are going to use
them, customer satisfaction surveys should be tailored to ask for behavioral
episodes, not gut reactions and should only be used in conjunction with other,
less biased measures of employee performance.

 

Hekman,
D. R., Aquino, K., Owens, B. P., Mitchell, T. R., Schilpzand, P., &
Leavitt, K. (2010). An examination of whether and how racial and gender biases
influence customer satisfaction. Academy of Management Journal, 53, 238-264

Are there cultural differences in the “Think Manager, Think Male” phenomenon?

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Topic: Leadership, Gender, Culture
Publication: Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
Article: Causal Attributions About Feminine and Leadership Roles: A Cross-Cultural Comparison
Authors: R. Garcia-Retamero and E. López-Zafra
Reviewed By: Samantha Paustian-Underdahl

Even though gender stereotypes have been changing recently, men are still perceived to be more characteristic of managers than are women (Eagly, 2007). However, little research has examined how these perceptions may differ depending on the traditional or progressive nature of different societies. Garcia-Retamero and López -Zafra (2009) examine the question of whether there are cultural differences in people’s causal attributions about male and female leaders in the workplace.

The authors examined two countries whose residents might hold different views about women as potential leaders: Germany and Spain. German society generally maintains gender egalitarianism as a social value to a greater extent than Spanish society (House, Hanges, Javidan, Dorfman, & Gupta, 2004). That is, Germans prescribe differentiated gender roles less often than Spaniards and Germans generally place women in a higher status in their society.

The participants for this study consisted of 180 undergraduate students from the University of Granada (Spain; 90 men and 90 women) and 180 undergraduate students from the Free University of Berlin 
(Germany; 90 men and 90 women). The authors analyzed whether the sex of a candidate for a leadership position, the type of industry in which he or she works (male- oriented, female-oriented, or unspecified), and participants’ nationality and gender influence the perception of incongruity between the leadership role and the feminine gender role. Garcia-Retamero and López -Zafra (2009) found that:

· Spanish participants showed more prejudice toward the female candidate than German
participants did. Their expectations about the female candidate’s potential for promotion when she worked in an industry incongruent with her gender role were much lower than those of the German participants.

· All participants (regardless of country) who predicted that the female candidate would be promoted generally made an external causal attribution to explain such promotion (e.g., luck). This was especially the case when the female candidate worked in the incongruent industry but also in the unspecified industry.

· In general, participants (regardless of country) made an internal causal attribution (e.g., ability) to explain the male candidate’s success even if he worked in a female-congenial environment.

· Spanish participants were more likely than German participants to make an external
causal attribution (e.g., luck), when predicting that the female candidate would succeed in getting the promotion.

· When predicting the female candidate’s failure to obtain the promotion, Spanish participants more often than German participants chose an internal causal attribution (e.g., lack of skills).

In sum, organizations should consider the different societal expectations and status categories in place when developing leaders globally. There may be particularly difficult challenges in countries that have traditional gender-role stereotypes, and industry-specific standards. The authors maintain some hope, however, that the prejudice against female leaders may change over time. Their research suggests that when women have less traditional roles and people hold a less traditional view of women, the prejudice is diminished.

Garcia-Retamero, R., & López-Zafra, E. (2009). Causal attributions about feminine and
leadership roles. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 40, 492-509.

Misperceptions of Family-Work Conflict Maintain the Glass Ceiling

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Topic: Conflict, Gender
Publication: Academy of Management Journal (OCT 2009)
Article: Bosses’ perceptions of family-work conflict and women’s promotability: Glass ceiling effects.
Authors: J.M. Hoobler, S.J. Wayne, and G. Lemmon
Reviewed By: Benjamin Granger

Although women have made headway in cracking through the glass ceiling, this barrier is still very much intact.  Women make up about half of the U.S. workforce, but they represent as little as 10% of  executive level managers.

Hoobler, Wayne, and Lemmon (2009) investigated whether bosses’ perceptions of family-work conflict (conflict arising from the family and leaking over into work) impact promotability ratings of female middle managers. That is, do bosses assume that women have more family-work conflict and if so, does this keep the glass ceiling in place.

Hoobler et al.’s results suggest that managers do in fact perceive that women experience more family-work conflict. But check this out: the male managers in their study actually reported more family-work conflict than the female managers. Even though men reported more conflict, bosses perceived that women experience more!

Additionally, female supervisors were just as guilty as male supervisors of perceiving that women experience more family-work conflict (Surprising, right?).

Finally, Hoobler et al.’s found that bosses’ perceptions of women’s increased family-work conflict were related to lower ratings of fit for their job and fit within the organization as a whole. And importantly, perceptions of fit related directly (and strongly) to promotability ratings.

Evidently, supervisors allow their misperceptions about work-family conflict to influence their assessment of how well the employee fits into their job and into the organization (“We don’t need your baggage from home here at work”). And ultimately, this process works to keep women out of upper management.

Hoobler, J.M., Wayne, S.J., & Lemmon, G. (2009). Bosses’ perceptions of family-work
conflict and women’s promotability: Glass ceiling effects. Academy of Management Journal, 52(5), 939-957.