Leader support for gender equity: Understanding prosocial goal orientation,leadership motivation,and power sharing

We focus on how interpersonal characteristics should influence leader support for gender equity in organizations. Recognizing gender disparities in organizations and the “labyrinth” that women face when they advance in their careers (cf. Eagly & Carli, 2007), we develop a model for how interpersonal characteristics of leaders, both men and women, influence power construal and thus their use of empowerment, mentoring, and performance feedback, ultimately affecting career opportunities for women in organizations. The model proposes that leaders who are high on communal goal orientation, a prosocial characteristic, are more likely to construe power through a responsibility lens and behave in ways that ultimately support gender equity in organizations. In contrast, leaders with an exchange goal orientation are more likely to construe power through a freedom lens and behave in ways that are self-serving. Prestige motivation will increase the extent to which leaders, especially those who are communally oriented, share power. Dominance motivation will increase the extent to which leaders, especially those who are exchange oriented, act in self-interest and retain power, ultimately imposing barriers to women's career advancement. Organizations can potentially increase leader power sharing by encouraging and reinforcing leaders' prosocial characteristics of communal orientation and prestige motivation. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Women Entrepreneurs: Can We Remove the Barriers?

Entrepreneurial activity among women continues to attract attention world wide. However, despite obvious gains, women lag behind men in business ownership and economic independence on every continent. This paper will review the research on entrepreneurship as a career choice for women, the motivations and career paths followed by women entrepreneurs, the attitudes and behaviors associated with successful ventures, the problems that persist and policies that conspire to keep women’s businesses few and small. A discussion of legislation and practices that have helped and hindered women’s entrepreneurship will follow, with suggestions for reframing the issues and reforming policies.     

Chinese professional immigrants in Australia: a gendered pattern in (re)building their careers

Few studies have investigated contemporary professional migrant women from mainland China to developed economies like Australia to understand their motives of migration and the strategy they may adopt to advance their careers. This paper fills part of this important research gap by investigating the career rebuilding experience of Chinese professional immigrants in Australia. It examines the motives of their migration, their career aspirations, the strategies they adopt to rebuild their career and the types of career they are rebuilding. It explores how the compounded effect of gender, race, immigration and family commitment may be articulated in the family and social relations, and how these factors affect women's career aspirations and outcomes. This paper concludes that whilst social capital is important for Chinese migrant women professionals who already possess a high level of human capital, to restart their post-migration career, cultural capital is crucial for their managerial career advancement.     

Individualization and Marketization of Responsibility for Gender Equality: The Case of Female Managers in China

This article investigates the question of where the responsibility for promoting gender equality resides in the Chinese employment context. Utilizing Acker's (2006) inequality regimes framework, the study explores women's underrepresentation in management roles in China and explains the persistence of gender inequalities in managerial echelons of Chinese organizations. Based on 30 interviews with female managers, the findings demonstrate the marketization and individualization of gender equality in organizational activity. The existing gender inequality, and the lack of responsibility for tackling it, has been either legitimized by eluding to the commercial‐only focus of organizations or rendered invisible through a belief in individual choice as the determining factor of career progression for women. Gender inequality in management is also maintained through the compliance of female managers themselves with the presumed legitimacy of gender‐based differential access to managerial roles. References to culture and tradition, market forces, competitive pressures, and individual choices by female managers are often made in explaining the unequal career paths and outcomes for men and women in their organizations. Our findings contribute to the human resource management (HRM) literature by framing macrosocietal context as a dynamic and endogenous aspect of management of human resources in organizations and provide novel insights into the interplay between HRM and societal context. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Occupational gender segregation Trends and explanations

This article examines recent research on occupational segregation by gender. It reviews and evaluates statistical approaches to measuring the extent to which women are disproportionately represented in “women’s jobs” and men in “men’s jobs.” By combining the findings of a number of studies, it traces the changes in the extent in occupational segregation from the end of the nineteenth century until 1995, and the forms and extent of gender segregation in occupations cross-nationally. In addition to the trends, this article considers the consequences of segregation to women. Finally, current explanations for occupational segregation are analyzed and assessed by considering the empirical data on occupational segregation.     

Women leaders—challenges,successes, and other insights from the top

The reasons for the persistent lag of women as leaders are complex. Attrition is an issue for women for many reasons, including traditional gender roles that may affect how women are perceived and the choices they have available (or they make), a lack of role models, the undervaluing of women's traditional communication and leadership styles, and organizational culture. Within medicine (clinical environments) and academic medicine (medical school and clinical environments), it is clear that the lack of women in leadership positions is more than a pipeline or a labyrinth problem. We undertook this case study to better understand the current challenges experienced by women aspiring to leadership positions in medicine and academic medicine. What types of challenges do women face as they move up in an academic or medical environment? And which challenges impact more than others in attaining leadership roles in these organizations: race and ethnicity, differences in leadership style and skills, mentorship and network, life experiences and family responsibilities, organizational culture, or gender? Our study addresses a gap in the literature by examining the leadership experiences of eight successful women in the fields of medicine and academic medicine. The emerging insights from these leaders may be useful for women from diverse backgrounds aspiring to be senior leaders in the future.     

Work goals among male and female business students in Canada and China: the effects of culture and gender

The work goals of 374 male and female business students in Canada and China were compared along six dimensions: simplicity/routine, extrinsic rewards, organizational influence, intrinsic rewards, balanced life and moral congruence. Compared with Canadians, the Chinese exhibited a weaker concern for balanced life, an equal attention to extrinsic rewards and organizational influence, and a stronger interest in intrinsic rewards, simplicity/routine and moral congruence. The young educated women in the two countries appear to face similar challenges of balancing their career and family interests. Canadian and Chinese women, while giving higher priority to the goals of balanced life and simplicity/routine than their male counterparts, were as concerned about their career success as the latter, in terms of both materialistic and intrinsic rewards. The pattern of sex differences in work goals was, however, not entirely identical between the two countries. While no sex difference existed with respect to organizational influence in Canada and moral congruence in China, Chinese women assigned less importance to organizational influence than their male counterparts and Canadian women focused more on moral congruence than their male counterparts. For Western multinational firms in China, the results of this study suggest that, even though the Chinese male and female professionals give very high priority to career success, the special needs of the Chinese women should not be overlooked. To compete effectively for the talents of professional women in China, these firms need to consider providing their Chinese employees some of the 'family-friendly' organizational initiatives, such as flextime and part-time work, which are already made available for many of their North American employees.     

Gender, self-employment and microcredit programs An Indonesian case study

Credit is often the missing link for low-income families that try to make a living by operating small microenterprises. At the same time, the presumption that lending to the poor is very risky, the costs of operation are high, and the low repayment rates for such loans limit bankers’ willingness to extend credit to the poor. This article, however reports on the results of a microcredit program in Indonesia which suggests that when agencies, government and non-government, in a developing country make credit available to low income women, they can reduce the costs of delivery, greatly increase repayment rates, and substantially improve the well-being of poor families. Other studies also suggest that such credit tends to increase women’s participation in decision making, reduces fertility, substantially improves household nutrition and raises aspirations for children’s education. Our case study cofirms these results.     

Evaluating business value of IT towards optimisation of the application portfolio

Information technology has become heavily embedded in business operations. As business needs change over time, IT applications are expected to continue providing required support. Whether the existing IT applications are still fit for the business purpose they were intended or new IT applications should be introduced is a strategic decision for business, IT and business-aligned IT. In this article, we present a method that aims to analyse business functions and IT roles and to evaluate business-aligned IT from both social and technical perspectives. The method introduces a set of techniques that systematically supports the evaluation of the existing IT applications in relation to their technical capabilities for maximising business value. Furthermore, we discuss the evaluation process and results that are illustrated and validated through a real-life case study of a UK borough council and followed by discussion on implications for researchers and practitioners.     

The role of job assignment and human capital endowments in explaining gender differences in job performance and promotion

We test a job ladders theory of career progression within internal labor markets as developed by Lazear and Rosen (1990). The theory argues that gender promotion gaps are due to sorting of men and women into career tracks with different promotion opportunities based on ex ante quit probabilities. Analyzing US federal government employees using a dynamic unobserved panel data model, we find that job assignment is one of the strongest predictors of gender differences in promotion. We also find that women have to jump higher performance hurdles to promote across grades, but, within grades, their promotion probabilities are comparable to those of men. In this organization, women can be found in both fast- and slow-track jobs, based on their promotion history, suggesting that unobserved heterogeneity is revealed to the firm over the worker's career.     

基于发展周期的IT企业职业生涯管理实施策略

处于不同发展阶段的IT企业，其职业生涯管理实施策略各不相同。本文通过分析IT企业发展周期特点，针对不同发展阶段IT企业面临的发展任务与人力资源管理重点，提出了不同发展阶段IT企业的职业生涯管理实施策略。     

Women abroad: getting the best results from women managers

Abstract This study explores the work environment of expatriate women managers in American corporations and investigates the determinants of their job satisfaction. The strategic importance of global assignments has increased over the years. The real cost of unsuccessful expatriates extends beyond the monetary expenses. As the number of women managers working overseas increases, so does the importance of this topic. Additionally, because women in expatriate positions are relatively new, their needs for job satisfaction and career aspirations are not known to most organizations. This research intends to fill this gap. The study concentrates on four major areas that are considered important for obtaining job satisfaction: (1) the way in which organizations design their overseas jobs, (2) women's skills and characteristics, (3) international human resource policies of companies and (4) the cultural environment of host countries. The applied research covers two phases: a study of expatriate managers during their assignments overseas and the evaluation of overseas experience upon their return. The results indicate that women in overseas assignments are satisfied overall with their jobs. However, organizational variables are more strongly related to job satisfaction. The nature of job design in overseas postings has the greatest impact on women's job satisfaction. When the jobs are enriched, women gain intrinsic rewards and have high job satisfaction. Organizational support also contributes to the satisfaction of women expatriates. Training, mentoring and repatriation preparations have high impact on women's success and satisfaction. Women expatriates are more concerned with their repatriation and future advancement than their present assignments. The findings are important for theoretical and practical reasons. Theoretically, the achievement and satisfaction of women managers overseas cannot be simplified without taking into account organizational, personal and cultural factors. Practically, companies need to respond to the individual needs of expatriate women managers and then decide on their assignments and their repatriation accordingly.     

Managerial career success in Canadian organizations: is gender a determinant?

The purpose of this research is to examine which of the following approaches - human capital, family context, socio-economic origin, work investment and reward expectations and structural factors - can eliminate the influence of gender on career success of 3,060 Canadian managers. Taken individually, these different approaches did not counter the effect of gender on career success of managers. However, the use of an overall regression model containing all the approaches countered the effect of gender on the number and speed of promotion, but not on salary and hierarchical level. Finally, the results suggest that the career success of male and female managers is predicted by different variables.     

Justifying health IT investments: A process model of framing practices and reputational value

Despite important research contributions on the financial and operational dimensions of information technology (IT) value, justifying health IT (HIT) investments remains a difficult and enduring issue for IT managers. Recent work has expanded our understanding of HIT value, by focusing on the initial resource allocation stage, and through conceptualizations of value across multiple dimensions. Building on these developments, we adopt a performative perspective to examine the research question of how practitioners justify early stage HIT investments, with a focus on reputational value. We explored this question through a comparative field study of two hospital organizations in the English National Health Service (NHS). We found that practitioners' temporally orientated framing practices matter in justifying HIT investments, enacting different possibilities for reputational value. We develop a process model to explain these dynamics and highlight the mutability of reputational value, which can lead to different possibilities for restoring, enhancing, or maintaining reputation. We conclude by discussing the implications for justifying HIT investments.     

Women Managers’ Careers in China: Theorizing the Influence of Gender and Collectivism

This article is concerned with developing an understanding of the careers of women managers in China. Existing literature suggests that while women in China are comparatively well represented in management roles, they face distinctive pressures and barriers to their progress arising from entrenched patriarchal and collectivist aspects of the Chinese cultural tradition. However, little is known about how these aspects impact on women's orientations towards their careers and to what extent influential Western career theories are adequate in interpreting their experience. Drawing on interviews with 20 women managers in China, the article interprets women's orientations towards their careers in relation to their adherence to traditional gender roles and collectivist values. Using this framework, a fourfold taxonomy is developed which identifies “conformist,” “revolutionary,” “soloist,” and “dissident” orientations. The article suggests that Western career theories fail to capture the collective dimension, and thus do not account fully for the range of experience and orientations of Chinese women managers that are captured in the taxonomy. Implications, both practical and theoretical, are discussed. Recommendations are also made as to how management and career development policies might be developed in organizations in China in order to address the diverse needs and preferences of women managers. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A Conversation with Katherine K. Wallman

Katherine Wallman has had a highly distinguished career in federal statistics and has been serving as the Chief Statistician in the USA for the last 22 years. She was also the President of the American Statistical Association (ASA) in 1992. This interview starts with Wallman's early career and introduction to the field of statistics and goes on to describe her fascinating journey and many accomplishments. The interview was conducted on 19 November 2014. The author thanks Mary Ann Kasper, CNSTAT staff, for transcribing.     

Bouncing up: The development of women leaders’ resilience

Although there are preliminary indications that resilience is a key factor for women on their way to top leadership positions, research on this topic is scarce. To narrow this research gap, we applied an exploratory interview study focusing on the development of women leaders’ resilience. We conducted 25 biographical interviews with women in top leadership positions in medium and large companies listed in Germany. Through a qualitative content analysis, we identified three critical phases for the development of women leaders’ resilience—early life, early career, and upper leadership—as well as phase-specific resilience factors—i.e., individual, situational, and behavioral factors. We integrated these findings in a process model that provides insights into the interlinkages of the different phases and factors and can serve as a starting point for future research.     

Women’s position in the household

Women’s labor market position has changed dramatically during the past century, while changes in the home have followed at a slower pace. Marriage and motherhood and responsibilities for most household labor still affect women’s choices about whether and under what conditions to work for pay. The U.S. government does not have a coherent set of policies about work/family life, lagging far behind Canada and western Europe. Employer policies can be helpful but are more available to workers at higher income levels and are more likely to be used by women than men. Thus, women continue to make “choices” under seriously constrained conditions.     

Women-friendly HRM good for QWL? The case of Hong Kong based companies

Organizations in Hong Kong were surveyed to gauge how women-friendly they were and how their human resource managers viewed the effect of women-friendly HRM policies and practices on employees' quality of work life. It was found that only about half of the policies mentioned in the questionnaire were practised by less than 10 per cent of the organizations. Principal component analysis conducted showed that organizational women-friendliness was multi-facet in nature. Using these facets - women friendly dimensions (WFDs) - as criteria and controlling for size, the study found that firms with American and European origins were more women-friendly than Hong Kong firms. Furthermore, when American companies were compared to Hong Kong companies, it was on the WFD of career development that the former were significantly higher than the latter. In contrast, when comparing European organizations with Hong Kong organizations, it was the WFD of flexibility on which the two differed most markedly.     

从信息采纳的角度探讨制糖业信息化问题

广西的制糖业面临激烈的国内和国际竞争,信息技术是提高制糖企业效益和竞争力的有力手段。但是,目前对企业引入信息技术后的技术扩散过程缺乏对微观扩散机制的研究。文章在UTAUT模型的基础上,对企业引入信息技术后员工的采纳过程进行了探讨。