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The purpose of this report is to highlight findings from research presented at the 2006 Administrative Sciences Association of Canada conference in Banff, Alberta.

Ten papers, of interest to Equal Opportunities International readers, were selected from the proceedings and presentations made at the conference for this report. The papers themselves vary in terms of research design and methodology. There was a mix of conceptual/review papers and empirical studies, using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

Findings from the empirical studies showed that women and minorities continue to face barriers in employment and the workplace. Women continue to experience gender role stereotypes detrimental to their careers, while minorities face both discrimination and harassment at work.

Each of the papers selected demonstrated new insights, both conceptually and empirically, and contributes to the literature on diversity.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an alternative approach to traditional campus recruiting, using the social media. Specifically, we propose a three-step strategy using Facebook to attract and recruit college graduates.

In Step 1, employers use Facebook to attract as many target students as possible to an employer’s Fan page. In Step 2, employers actively engage with students to enhance their employer brand as a prospective employer. In Step 3, employers initiate a call-to-action to encourage students to act upon a job opportunity and apply for the position.

Social media recruiting can payoff in several ways: First, employers have the advantage of speed through social media recruiting. Second, employers also have broad and frequent access to college students. Employers will also reduce their overall college recruiting costs and lastly, employers enhance their overall employment branding through the use of Facebook for college recruiting.

Given the impending retirement of baby boomers, there is an urgent need to recruit college graduates in large numbers. Historically, college recruiting has been the preferred channel; however, few students attend campus career fairs or find information sessions and their campus career centers helpful. As an alternative, employers should consider using social media as a recruiting tool to attract and recruit college graduates.

Social media recruiting has the potential to help smaller employers stand out among larger employers, reach out to a larger pool of candidates, speed up the recruitment process and reduce overall recruitment costs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gender gap in pre-career salary expectations. Five major explanations are tested to explain the gap, as well as understand the relative contribution of each explanation.

Data were collected from 452 post-secondary students from Canada.

Young women had lower initial and peak salary expectations than their male counterparts. The gap in peak salary could be explained by initial salary expectations, beta values, the interaction between beta values and gender, and estimations of the value of the labor market. Men and women in this study expected to earn a considerably larger peak salary than they expected for others.

Cross-sectional data cannot infer causality, and the Canadian sample may not be generalizable to other countries given that an economic downturn occurred at time of data collection. Research should continue to investigate how individuals establish initial salary expectations, while also testing more dynamic models given the interaction effect found in terms of gender and work values in explaining salary expectations.

The majority of the gender gap in peak salary expectations can be explained by what men and women expect to earn immediately after graduation. Further, women and men have different perceptions of the value they attribute to the labor market and what might be a fair wage, especially when considering beta work values.

The data suggests that the gender-wage gap is likely to continue and that both young men and women would benefit from greater education and information with respect to the labor market and what they can reasonably expect to earn, not just initially, but from a long-term perspective.

This study is the first to simultaneously investigate five theoretical explanations for the gender gap in pre-career expectations.

Current publication practices in the scholarly (International) Business and Management community are overwhelmingly anti-Popperian, which fundamentally frustrates the production of scientific progress. This is the result of at least five related biases: the verification, novelty, normal science, evidence, and market biases. As a result, no one is really interested in replicating anything. In this essay, the author extensively argues what he believes is wrong, why that is so, and what we might do about this. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This is an essay, combining a literature review with polemic argumentation.

Only a tiny fraction of published studies involve a replication effort. Moreover, journal authors, editors, reviewers and readers are not interested in seeing nulls and negatives in print. This replication crisis implies that Popper’s critical falsification principle is actually thrown into the scientific community’s dustbin. Behind the façade of all these so-called new discoveries, false positives abound, as do questionable research practices meant to produce all this allegedly cutting-edge and groundbreaking significant findings. If this dismal state of affairs does not change for the good, (International) Business and Management research is ending up in a deadlock.

A radical cultural change in the scientific community, including (International) Business and Management, is badly needed. It should be in the community’s DNA to engage in the quest for the “truth” – nothing more, nothing less. Such a change must involve all stakeholders: scholars, editors, reviewers, and students, but also funding agencies, research institutes, university presidents, faculty deans, department chairs, journalists, policymakers, and publishers. In the words of Ioannidis (2012, p. 647): “Safeguarding scientific principles is not something to be done once and for all. It is a challenge that needs to be met successfully on a daily basis both by single scientists and the whole scientific establishment.”

Publication practices have to change radically. For instance, editorial policies should dispose of their current overly dominant pro-novelty and pro-positives biases, and explicitly encourage the publication of replication studies, including failed and unsuccessful ones that report null and negative findings.

This is an explicit plea to change the way the scientific research community operates, offering a series of concrete recommendations what to do before it is too late.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate diversity attitudes of business school students across three national contexts Norway; India and the Czech Republic. These three countries are dissimilar from one another in terms of values, such as individualism and collectivism (Hofstede, 2001) self-expression and secular-rationalism (Inglehart and Welzel, 2010) and inequality. The authors wanted to explore similarities and differences in diversity attitudes of respondents from these countries.

Using the diversity attitude scale developed by De Meuse and Hostager (2001) the authors conducted comparative research and collected data from 234 business school graduate students.

The authors found that all groups were positive towards diversity, however, there were significant differences in diversity attitudes between the countries. The Czech Republic had the most positive diversity scores and India the least positive.

This study used convenient samples of business students which might not be representative of the future management in these countries. However, the findings do suggest that attitudes towards diversity are generally positive across these very different national contexts.

The findings suggest that in today’s international context people are becoming more positive towards diversity – at least on the conceptual level and a bottom up approach from MNC to diversity management might be easier to implement than previously thought. The preliminary evidence from the study suggests that this first step of introducing diversity policies across national borders might not meet as much resistance as previously anticipated.

The movement towards seeing and accepting different others is moving in the right direction.

To use this established diversity attitudes measure across three very different national cultures. In the literature there is a call for more comparative research on diversity management.

This exploratory study examined the role of both gender and race/ethnicity, and their interaction, on cultural values likely to be related to attitudes toward equality and diversity and an attitude towards equality and diversity itself. Data were collected from 120 employees from a large financial institution in Canada. Non‐North Americans and non‐Caucasians held cultural values that were found to be associated with less support for equality. These findings suggest that additional efforts must be made to bring non‐Caucasians on side as companies attempt to create a level playing field for all employees.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the different employment statuses of under‐employment, temporary employment, unemployment and non‐participation in the labor force are associated with perceived well‐being among persons with disabilities.

The authors used data from the 2006 Participation and Activity Limitation Survey (PALS) conducted by Statistics Canada to develop six categories of employment status. OLS regression analysis was used for hypothesis testing.

Findings indicated that fully utilized permanent employees show the highest level of life satisfaction while unemployed persons searching for work have the lowest levels of life satisfaction and the highest levels of perceived workplace discrimination. Permanent employees whose skills are greatly underutilized show the second‐lowest level of life satisfaction and equally high perceived workplace discrimination as unemployed persons. Non‐participants in the labor force show life satisfaction levels similar to those of permanent moderately underutilized employees as well as temporary employees, but report relatively little workplace discrimination.

The study links vocational status to the psychological well‐being of persons with disabilities in a large representative sample covering the full spectrum of disability types and occupational statuses. As such, it validates conclusions from smaller studies examining single organizations or focusing on workers with specific types of disabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse two features of multicultural societies: diversity and equity. The author argues that both these features are necessary for multicultural societies and their institutions to be successful. Diversity is understood to include variations in culture, ethnicity, religion, age, gender and sexual orientation. Equity is understood to include inclusive participation and the removal of barriers to such participation. Diversity without the opportunity for equitable participation can lead to a form of separation; equity without diversity can lead to a form of assimilation; the absence of both can lead to marginalisation; and the presence of both can lead to a full integration.

This is a conceptual paper with a focus on better understanding of how to manage multicultural societies and institutions.

The author distinguishes between three meanings of multiculturalism; as demography; as policy; and as ideology. He proposes a conceptual framework to illustrate the various ways in which intercultural relations may take place at three levels (society, institutions and individual), and with two kinds of groups (dominant and non-dominant). An analysis of multiculturalism policy in Canada and internationally reveals three principles needed for success in such societies: the multiculturalism principle; the integration principle; and the contact principle.

The use of these concepts for better management of intercultural relations in multicultural societies and institutions through mutual adaptation is proposed.

With much debate and confusion about the meaning and value of multiculturalism, this paper has sought to clarify many of the concepts and distinctions.

Despite initiatives designed to encourage more women, the construction industry and its associated professions remain resolutely male dominated and the situation shows little signs of changing. Reporting on the findings of an exploratory study which examines the transfer of Equality Policy into practice in three European countries: the UK, France and Spain, the purpose of this paper is to provide cross-national comparisons of the implementation of gender initiatives in a single profession, that of architecture.

In total, 66 semi-structured interviews were carried out in the qualitative paradigm with women architects in the UK, France and Spain.

Findings are twofold: first, the research indicates that there are many weaknesses in the support offered and in the design of the initiatives which serve to discourage women rather than encourage them and second, there is a clear need for the dominant body within the industry – the men – to provide the impetus for change.

The research is unique in that it offers a cross-national comparison of the situation within a single profession in a male-dominated industry which has attracted much attention for its lack of diversity and its reluctance to embrace change.