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This article aims to provide a qualitative analysis of the diversity management challenges of professionals in corporate America. A specific focus is on the differential outcomes of women and ethnic minorities and their equal employment opportunities in the workplace.

This paper examined the workplace experiences of 42 African‐American and Caucasian men and women in corporate America. Semi‐structured interviews were held to discover diversity management issues unique to these groups.

It was found that challenges supported a priori assertions of organizational culture, discrimination/stereotyping, and human capital investments. Each of these challenges impacted members in qualitatively different ways that may account for the variability in work experiences and outcomes. While there were some consistent themes, the findings demonstrated significant within race and between gender differences.

Qualitative studies provide in‐depth information and a deeper understanding about phenomena which allows one to capture general themes that can be obscured in survey research. The intersection of race and gender provides unique findings that should be considered in future research. The use of self‐reported perceptual data without triangulation can limit the generalizability of the study but does provide a view in the language and emotion of the individual who is sharing his/her workplace experience.

The findings demonstrate that diversity management practices need to consider race, gender, as well as multiple group memberships (e.g. African‐American women) which reveals unique issues to be addressed within organizational contexts. There are also differences within race, by gender, in the ways that individuals experience the workplace. The findings provide insight for managers to aid in diversity management and retention.

Race is socially constructed and has a political rather than biological basis for determining it. Racial categories in one country which limit an individual's power, influence, freedom, and clout may be very different than categories in another country or political context. Because race is socially constructed, individuals may increase or lose power, privilege, influence and status as they move from one sociopolitical context/power structure in one country to another.

This research provides an additional lens through which to examine the workplace experiences of women and minorities to aid managers in deriving the maximum benefit in a diverse, well‐qualified labor force.

Women pursuing male-dominated careers face well-documented barriers to career success (e.g., stereotypes, sexual harassment, limited access to professional networks, and mentoring), which have the potential to be exacerbated or diminished by the increasing prevalence of work from home (WFH). In this chapter, the authors first review key career obstacles for women in male-dominated fields and analyse the impact of WFH on these barriers and, second, provide actionable strategies for organisations to implement WFH in a way that promotes rather than hampers the success of women in these fields. Both career obstacles and WFH remedies are considered through an overarching framework focussed on the significance of work–family boundary management, inclusion, and career advancement. Drawing on the extant research, the authors provide evidence-based, actionable guidance to help organisations and supervisors leverage WFH to support the career success of women in male-dominated careers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the under-researched dynamics of gender, workplace support, and perceived job demands in two different contexts, the United States and India.

The paper draws from two studies conducted in different contexts (the United States and India) via different methodological approaches (quantitative and qualitative, respectively). In Study I of this paper, data was collected using questionnaires from a nationally representative sample of adult workers in the United States. In Study II, interviews were conducted with 48 workers in India, selected using convenience sampling.

It was found that both in the United States and India, women perceived considerably greater job demands than men. In terms of workplace support, both the studies found that workplace culture and supervisors’ support influenced the perception of job demands, but the same was not true for coworkers’ support, which mainly helped in coping rather than actually reducing the perception of job demands.

The article contributes to research by concluding that job demands as a construct are not clearly segregated from gender demands or expectations, especially in the way women “perceive” it. Women construct job demands as “job-family” demands and workplace support as “job-family” support. Moreover, being a woman in the workplace, women feel the “burden” of gender.

It would be useful for organizations and policy makers to understand that women remain “conscious” of their gender in the workplace, and for them, the meaning of job demands and workplace support are “job-family” demands and “work-family” support, respectively.

This research intends to contribute toward thinking about gender relations and empowerment of people within organizational and work settings from a new light.

The present study provides an alternative way of thinking about gender, job demands, and workplace support. Its value underlies in the way it raises the voices of women workers.

The sawmill shootings in British Columbia, Canada, resulted in fatalities and grievous injuries to workers, which have put a sensational face on workplace violence in the forestry sector. Yet, for all of the attention devoted after this horrific incident, to the growth and possible consequences of workplace violence, little empirical investigation has been done regarding the extent to which this type of violence may have permeated the sawmill forestry workplace in Canada; employees' experiences of workplace violence; employees' definition of workplace violence; the specific type of violence that occurs in sawmills; and the drivers of workplace violence as experienced and perceived by managers, union, and employees in the forestry sector context in British Columbia, Canada.

This research critically explores these questions to better understand employees' experiences of workplace violence, the problems of violence and its implications for workplace stress, well-being, leadership, and corporate governance. This research contributes to the workplace violence body of knowledge as it relates to employment in the forestry sector in British Columbia, Canada.

A mixed methodological approach was adopted using 367 questionnaire survey, 20 telephone interviews, and 2 focus groups lasting 45–60 minutes (managers and employees) were used to focus on managers, union, and employees' accounts of their own experiences and perceptions of workplace violence.

The analysis of the data in this study lends support to the conclusion that workplace violence waged against workers in the forestry sector is significantly different than the violence being perpetrated in other sectors and work settings. The findings further suggest that forestry workers work environment, communities, and activity contributes meaningfully to the differences in workplace violence experienced by Sawmill employees.

Insights obtained from this research can be used to develop educational tools and resources, and new policies to foster workplace practices conducive to reducing drivers to workplace violence, towards a more respectful workplace and overall employee well-being.

Against a backdrop of legislative and policy changes, this paper assesses the extent to which the over-65 age-group is moving from the margins to the mainstream of UK employment. The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in HR research and practice which, it is argued, has paid relatively little attention to the over-65s.

The analysis draws on three waves of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) (2001, 2008, 2014), to explore the extent to which organisational, occupational and sectoral marginalisation of the over-65s has changed in the twenty-first century.

The results show that the share of 65-69 year olds working as employees doubled between 2001 and 2014, primarily because long-term established employees worked longer. Overrepresentations of lower-level “Lopaq” occupations reduced, and over-65s became more integrated across occupations and sectors.

More research is needed to understand the factors driving the steady move from the margins to the mainstream (e.g. LFS does not measure pensions), and future research on the older workforce should automatically include workers in this age-group.

The discussion considers the implications for managerial practice, in a context of increasingly age-diverse workforces.

This paper addresses a gap in research into later life working and also demonstrates the ways in which the nature of employment among the over-65s is changing, thereby challenging some of the assumptions about those who work into later life and how they are – or should be managed.

Sociologists have documented how women in male-dominated occupations experience subtle and overt forms of discrimination based on gender stereotypes. This study examines women professional chefs to understand how they perceive and respond to stereotypes claiming women are not good leaders, are too emotional, and are not “cut out” for male-dominated work. Many of our participants resist these stereotypes and believe that their gender has benefited them in their jobs. Using in-depth interviews with women chefs, we show that they utilize essentialist gendered rhetoric to describe how women chefs are better than their male counterparts. While such rhetoric appears to support stereotypes emphasizing “natural” differences between men and women in the workplace, we suggest that women are reframing these discourses into a rhetoric of “feminine strength” wherein women draw from gender differences in ways that benefit them in their workplaces and their careers. Our conclusion discusses the implications of our findings for gender inequality at work.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of the probability of being a teleworker and the extent of earnings differentials between teleworkers and traditional employees.

The analysis is grounded on a theoretical framework depicting endogenous telework assignment and wage variations based on individual bargaining. The empirical strategy allows for non-random telework assignment, generating from individual- and job-specific observed as well as unobserved factors.

Results are based on the Italian labor force survey and uncover a key role of gender, higher education and family composition as determinants of the probability of teleworking. Furthermore, teleworkers enjoy a wage premium ranging between 2.7 and 8 percent.

Accounting for observed individual and job-specific effects, by both standard linear regression and propensity score matching, largely reduces the extent of wage premium emerging from unconditional descriptives; the results of an endogenous switching regression model however suggest that failing to properly care for unobserved factors leads to the underestimation of returns to telework.

This paper uses the microdata of the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) Survey to assess the contribution of occupational concentration to wage inequality between establishments and its growth over time. We show that occupational concentration plays an important role in wage determination for workers, in a wide variety of occupations, and can explain some establishment-level wage variation. Occupational concentration is increasing during the 2000–2011 time period, although much of this change is explained by other observable establishment characteristics. Overall, occupational concentration can help explain a small amount of wage inequality growth between establishments during this time period.

This chapter addresses research on worker skill, technology, and control over the labor process by focusing on routine immaterial labor or knowledge work. Based on participant observation conducted among analytics workers at a digital publishing network, I find that analytics workers appear paradoxically autonomous and empowered by management while being bound by ever-evolving, calculative cloud-based information and communication technologies (ICTs). Workers appear free to “be creative,” while ever-evolving ICTs exert unpredictable control over work. Based on this finding, I argue that sociology’s tendency to take organizational boundaries and technological stability for granted hampers analyses of contemporary forms of work. Thus, sociologists of work must extend outward – beyond communities of practice, labor markets, and the state – to include the ever-evolving, infrastructural, socio-technical networks in which work and organizations are embedded. Additionally, research on the experience of immaterial labor suggests that ICTs afford pleasurably immersive experiences that bind workers to organizations and their fields. Complicating this emerging body of research, I find workers acutely frustrated by these unpredictable, ever-evolving, cloud-based ICTs.