Search results

The lack of progress toward equity in the U.S. is evident across many spheres of society, academia notwithstanding. Women academicians, in particular, face many barriers that prevent them from advancing–including a continued unsupportive climate, competing work and family demands, and interpersonal discrimination. This paper reflects on a collaborative research effort in the United States to enhance allyship for women in academia.

The authors partnered with a major university to hold ally training for department chairs during a university-wide department chair meeting. The authors developed a methodology for creating and implementing training content using a focus-group-based training needs analysis and a diversity science grounded approach to allyship training. The authors followed this up with surveys to assess impact.

Participants indicated that they learned from the training, but participation in follow-up data collection was limited, hampering the ability to conduct rigorous quantitative analyses around intervention impact.

Although the sample size may have been too limited to detect effects, the current study provides an approach that furthers the way in which researchers and practitioners can better assess the impact of allyship to women academicians.

Published research on allies is very limited. The current research examines allies in the context of helping women in academia.

Despite widespread recognition of the importance of first-line supervisors in support of diversity, limited intervention designs are available. The authors add to the extant literature on diversity interventions, while highlighting barriers to rigorous intervention evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the nature of counterproductive work behavior (CWB) gender stereotypicality, and to consider whether despite efforts to systematically evaluate employees through formalized performance appraisal processes, gender-stereotypic bias is likely to enter into performance management systems.

Study 1 used archival data from 197 federal employees to explore actual punishment recommendations allocated to men and women who engaged in a variety of CWBs. Study 2 tested the causal effect of gender stereotypicality on punishment recommendations with 47 EMBA students who participated in a laboratory study.

Study 1 revealed an interaction between appellant gender and CWB stereotypicality with regard to termination decisions suggesting that women who engage in stereotypical (i.e. feminine) CWBs and men who engage in stereotypical (i.e. masculine) CWBs are more likely to be terminated than women and men who engage in gender counter-stereotypic CWB. Study 2 revealed that women (not men) tended to receive harsher punishment recommendations for stereotypical (i.e. feminine) CWB than for counter-stereotypical (i.e. masculine) CWB.

Findings illustrate that punishments are not universally extreme, as men and women are denigrated differentially depending on the stereotypicality of their behavior. The current research affirms that there are social constructions for evaluating performance that may continue to confound evaluations of performance.

This is one of the first studies to explore the gendered nature of CWB and supports the argument that prescriptive gender stereotypes shape reactions to CWBs.

Pygmalion and charisma are mutually compatible leadership constructs that beg integration. They share some basic assumptions about human nature, about how leaders lead, and about how they could lead more effectively. Nevertheless, for the most part these constructs are discussed in disparate academic literatures. The present treatise integrates these somewhat divergent yet partially overlapping approaches to leadership and management. The differences between Pygmalion and charismatic leadership, and the commonalities that they share, are explicated. The aim is to understand better how leaders affect followers and how they can exert their influence with greater effectiveness. Some ideas for further research and for more effective management practice based on integration of Pygmalion and charisma constructs are presented. The result is a description of “charismatic Pygmalion,” an integrated management style that embodies both leadership constructs.

Even more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination toward a number of groups in employment settings in the United States, workplace discrimination remains a persistent problem in organizations. This chapter provides a comprehensive review and analysis of contemporary theory and evidence on the nature, causes, and consequences of discrimination before synthesizing potential methods for its reduction. We note the strengths and weaknesses of this scholarship and highlight meaningful future directions. In so doing, we hope to both inform and inspire organizational and scholarly efforts to understand and eliminate workplace discrimination.

The purpose of this report is to highlight an important set of papers that address strategies for reducing discrimination that were presented at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP)'s annual conference.

This paper summarizes four papers from the SIOP conference that dealt explicitly with methods that individuals and organizations can take to avoid or reduce prejudice and discrimination.

Each paper provided empirical evidence of the existence of discrimination, as well as unique strategies for its reduction.

This report underscores the need for individuals and organizations, as well as researchers and practitioners, to work toward breaking down systems of privilege that legitimize discrimination.

The 2007 SIOP conference overall, and this set of presentations in particular, contributed critical new evidence that should guide research and practice regarding the equitable management of diversity in organizations.

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals experience institutionalized prejudice within society and in their working lives. This prejudice increases the stress that these individuals experience within the workplace. Thus, in this chapter, we outline the mechanisms of LGB-workplace stress, detailing the antecedents, outcomes, and strategies to remediate this form of stress. We first outline theoretical conceptualizations of workplace stress before explaining how sexual orientation minorities experience additional workplace stressors due to their specific, stigmatized identities. Then, we explain how the stressors of formal discrimination, interpersonal discrimination, stigma consciousness, internalized heterosexism, concealment, and social isolation each contribute to workplace stress and ultimately health and workplace outcomes. Finally, we discuss several strategies that organizations, stigmatized individuals, and allies can engage in to prevent and cope with each of these LGB-related workplace stressors. In so doing, this chapter encourages researchers and practitioners to continue to develop more comprehensive and effective strategies to combat the negative outcomes experienced by these and all other stigmatized employees, thereby promoting more healthy and inclusive organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of age-related stereotyping processes on younger workers’ mood, attitudes, and impression management behaviors at work.

Using survey data from 281 younger workers, the hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling.

As younger workers are more self-conscious about being age stereotyped, they are less likely to be satisfied with older co-workers, which is partly explained by negative mood associated with that metastereotype consciousness. Also, chronological age, age-group identification, and age prejudice, were critical influences on the emergence of metastereotype consciousness.

Unexpected findings point to: experiences of younger workers which may not follow the same patterns found with older groups and unique operation of age as a dynamic social category that may not parallel findings regarding other social categories.

There is clearly potential for younger workers to be concerned they are viewed “stereotypically” and this metastereotype consciousness influences how they feel, think, and behave at work. Organizations should be aware of the potential antecedents and consequences, as well as the nature of metastereotypic perceptions, to better facilitate positive and productive interactions across age groups at work.

This research contributes to an understanding of younger workers’ experiences at work, highlights the role of mood in the operation of metastereotypes on attitudes and behaviors in age-diverse contexts, and improves our understanding of social biases and inequality associated with age-based groups.

The current report is intended to provide a narrow, brief summery of research presented at the annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology regarding women in organizations.

The conference, which broadly seeks to inform the science and practice of human well‐being and performance in organizations and draws thousands of participants from academic, consulting, and government agencies, included over 35 symposia, posters, and meetings related to diversity in organizations.

Research presented provided empirical evidence that women continue to face subtle forms of discrimination and that there are consequences for such women and their employing organizations.

More multidisciplinary theory and research is needed to identify and develop effective strategies for the reduction of gender discrimination and the achievement of equal opportunities for men and women.

In summary, the SIOP conference continues serves as an incubator for research and practice regarding diversity in organizations. In particular, this year's meeting contributors provided empirical evidence that subtle discrimination toward women in organizations persists and that perceptions of bias can lead to negative attitudes and behaviors.

Previous research demonstrates the damaging effects of hostile sexism enacted towards women in the workplace. However, there is less research on the consequences of benevolent sexism: a subjectively positive form of discrimination. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Drawing from ambivalent sexism theory, the authors first utilized an experimental methodology in which benevolent and hostile sexism were interpersonally enacted toward both male and female participants.

Results suggested that benevolent sexism negatively impacted participants' self-efficacy in mixed-sex interactions. Extending these findings, the results of a second field study clarify self-efficacy as a mediating mechanism in the relationship between benevolent sexism and workplace performance.

Finally, benevolent sexism contributed incremental prediction of performance above and beyond incivility, further illustrating the detrimental consequences of benevolently sexist attitudes towards women in the workplace.

In this chapter, we theorize that metaperceptions (beliefs about how one is viewed by others) derived from social identity categories will influence intrapersonal processing and resultant member interaction patterns in diverse work groups. In turn, such patterns of interactions will affect the quality of emergent states within diverse groups, ultimately impacting group-level outcomes. We will extend previous work in this area by examining the formation, nature, and consequences of metaperceptions in workgroups within which individuals vary with regard to social identities. In addition, we will describe the implications of metaperceptions for the effective leadership of diverse groups.